Move OS to SATA drive

[frostbit]

Hi all, I'm new here and was hoping someone can help me out. I have an older Asus A7N8X deluxe mb with an 80GB IDE drive with XP Pro on it and a second 80GB SATA drive I use for storage. The IDE drive is starting to show signs of old age so I want to move the OS to the SATA drive. I don't want a dual boot configuration. I'll eventually replace the IDE drive with another SATA for storage.

I started by clearing the SATA drive and created a 20GB primary partition for the OS and left the rest of it unallocated. I'll decide how to set up the remaining space later. I finally got the OS to load on the SATA drive after much screwing around with getting the SATA drivers to load during the OS load. I have disconnected the IDE cable from the board so there would be no conflict with the existing XP loaded on the IDE drive.

I'm not sure what to do next.

1. Do I plug the IDE drive (jumper is on cable select) into the secondary IDE connection and move the CD and DVD drive cable to the primary connection?

2. My boot order is CDROM, SCSI, HDD0, the rest. When I created the primary partition on the SATA I called it H drive, since C was already in use. Will the H partition on the SATA be automatically assigned as the new C when I boot up the machine, and the old C with the original XP load be assigned another drive letter?

I don't know if I'm approaching this the right way.

Thanks

[Ponch]

I have disconnected the IDE cable from the board so there would be no conflict with the existing XP loaded on the IDE drive.

...

C was already in use.

Have you disconnected the IDE drive after installation on the SATA or is te C drive attributed to an other drive (C-D-E then F&G for opticals ?). Are you installing from a bootable CD or from your existing OS ?

Anyway you are better reinstalling making sure you install to the C drive.

[frostbit]

Sorry, I could have explained it better. I disconnected the IDE drive before I did the new load of XP Pro on the SATA drive. I'm installing from the original program cd. With the IDE still disconnected, the partition with the OS on the SATA shows up as C.

I want to now re-connect the IDE drive so I can transfer files to the SATA and use the IDE as backup until I can replace it with a new SATA drive. The IDE still has the OS system on it that I've been using up til now. I'm not sure what will happen when I connect both drives and boot the machine.

Someone has suggested I just need to change the jumper on the IDE drive to slave to make the SATA OS boot first.

I assume that if the SATA OS boots first then the partition on the IDE drive with the OS (old C partition) will be automatically assigned a new drive letter.

[Ponch]

Drive letters are assigned in the OS, not by "the machine". Only question when you plug both in is which one will be given priority in the BIOS ? From what you say, when you first prepared your SATA drive, the IDE was set to boot first, unless no bootable partition on the SATA made it look like this. Try first as is. If still no SATA boot, you will need to find the right config in your Bios so that your SATA drive comes before the IDE (HDD1-HDD0 ?). Then your SATA will have the C: drive and load its XP. In that XP, the IDE will be given different drive letters.

[frostbit]

Thanks Ponch, it worked. I plugged the IDE drive back into the board and left the jumper as cable select. I set the boot order CDROM, SCSI, HDD0. Turned it on and it booted the OS on the C partition on the SATA drive. The CDROM was assigned D, the DVD - E, and the three partitions on the IDE were given F (the old C), G and H.

[kingsc]

Thanks Ponch, it worked. I plugged the IDE drive back into the board and left the jumper as cable select. I set the boot order CDROM, SCSI, HDD0. Turned it on and it booted the OS on the C partition on the SATA drive. The CDROM was assigned D, the DVD - E, and the three partitions on the IDE were given F (the old C), G and H.

Are you familiar with imaging at all? A 30 dollar or so copy of Acronis True Image Home could have saved you a huge headache via HDD cloning.

[frostbit]

Ive never used imaging, I should look into it. In this particular instance, I wanted to have a fresh clean install of XP to start over with.

[jaclaz]

Are you familiar with imaging at all? A 30 dollar or so copy of Acronis True Image Home could have saved you a huge headache via HDD cloning.

And a US$ 0.00 copy of PING:

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

would have done the same, and you could get some 30 dollars of pizzas and cokes while the imaging took place.

Or are you a pepsi kind of guy?

Real programmers drink Coke!

http://uranus.chrysocome.net/

http://uranus.chrysocome.net/coke.htm

End of the advertisement section....

jaclaz

[frostbit]

I'm a rum and coke guy