[Computer question]How can I change the Windows boot drive?

[Razer]

I've tried google, but I think that my problem is a little unusual and I can't seem to find a lot of information about it. I'm hoping someone on here might be able to help.

Here's my situation. I've got a computer with 2 hard drives, one of which is the Primary IDE master, and one of which is the primary SATA. When I installed Windows, I installed it onto the SATA drive. The SATA drive is labeled D, and apparently Windows always puts some files onto the C drive, even if the OS isn't installed there. So I've got a WindowsXP Professional install on D:, and my boot.ini and MBR is on C.

I just bought a new 300GB SATA drive, and I want to use it as a data drive. I've already copied all of the data from C to the new drive, but I haven't touched the system files or the boot file. I'd like to remove the C drive and just have 2 SATA drives, but I forsee a couple of problems.

1. I think that if I remove the C: drive, Windows will start switching drive letters around, probably changing my D: drive to my C: drive. I have a feeling this will cause some seriously annoying problems.

2. I'm not sure what files I need to move to make a new drive the boot drive.

I'm looking for an easy solution here. I'd rather not have to reinstall Windows, because I don't want to deal with the hassle of reinstalling all the patches and service packs. How should I handle this problem?

I have come up with one possible approach. I'm thinking I can take all of the system files currently on C:, and copy them over to the new drive. Do whatever I need to do to set up an MBR on the new drive. Turn my computer off, and switch the SATA plugs to make the new drive my Primary drive and my old drive the Secondary drive. I'm hoping that this will keep the windows drive as the D drive.

Any advice? Will my approach work?

 

[vawlk]

add the new drive as an extra drive, add an ntfs partition, format it, delete it, image the current C drive to the new sata, plug new sata in to Sata drive 1, and the system drive in the sata drive 2.

Worst case, read about the fixboot, fixmbr, bootcfg utilities and make sure your bios is set correctly.

Oh and backup

edit: the whole create/delete ntfs partition makes sure there is a valid boot record for xp.

 

[CompuDude]

It may or may not be as much of an issue as you think, but there are a couple of fairly surefire way to eliminate any worries.

One is to use Ghost or another drive imaging application to Ghost the current C drive over to the new drive. This will take care of any MBR issues, and permissions issues that could arise by simply copying the files over normally.

First time you start up, Windows might get cranky, but it should start, eventually. As long as you can boot it once, you can then reassign the drive letters using the Disk Management console to however you want them.

The other way I can think of is to install the new drive *first*. Boot normally, with the IDE drive still in place. Let Windows assign whatever it wants for the new SATA drive's letter. Then you can play. Re-assign the IDE drive to a new letter, and then re-assign the new SATA drive to drive C. Once all the drives are "hard-coded" to hand-picked drive letters like this, they'll probably stay put.

All that said, if I was in your shoes I would clear my schedule for an evening a treat myself to a clean installation of Windows directly onto the new drive, installed as "C", so everything is nice and fresh and standard, to avoid any future complications of this sort.