Image C: drive on D: drive and make D: drive C: Bootable

S

Swen2012

New Member
Hi Folks,

New guy here. Having problems getting in to pcper.com so thought I would join your board. I am visiting my daughters in St Louis who has major problems with her pc. Really need some help getting it fixed.

I don't know how to get some of this done. This is a post of the issue and my step by step. But I think it can be done much easier.

Her drives C and D are SATA. And I do have Acronis 2012 on the machine. She is running WinXp SP2. I want to make the D drive (with image of C) into C bootable. I realize at some point I will have to switch SATA 1 and 2 connections.

Here is my feeble plan. But I'm sure you folks have better ideas.

My plan

- Make an image of my C on external drive with Acronis (backup software)

- Install Acronis 2012 to my D

- Do a restore of Image to D (now I would have an image on both drives

This is where I am stuck. I was thinking of formatting C (if that can be done) and renaming it to Z. Then rename D to C (but it has to be bootable). And lastly rename Z to D.

I don't know if you can format an active drive, but the new C would be bootable.

Sure hope this explained my issue enough. Basically I want to switch drives and format original C:.

Thanks for all assist you may offer.

Swen
 
Just use Acronis and clone C to D. It will automatically be bootable and have everything from C copied over to D. Then you can just yank the C drive out of the machine. It will also have the same drive name once everything is done, so just pull the original C drive out of the machine.
 
Voyager

voyagerfan99 said:
Just use Acronis and clone C to D. It will automatically be bootable and have everything from C copied over to D. Then you can just yank the C drive out of the machine. It will also have the same drive name once everything is done, so just pull the original C drive out of the machine.
Click to expand...

Will the machine automatically rename the D to C after the C is removed and I restart the system. Then when I put the removed drive back in, will it be named D? Going to try to do this Wednesday.

Thanks
 
It will look and act just as the original drive. When you boot to the new disk, it will install the other disk as a spare drive and show up (As D or E). Then you can just format it.
 
Voyager

voyagerfan99 said:
It will look and act just as the original drive. When you boot to the new disk, it will install the other disk as a spare drive and show up (As D or E). Then you can just format it.
Click to expand...

All came off well. I now have two drives, one cloned from the other. Both bootable. Want to format the old one. But my question is: how do I know which drive is the boot drive. I have what I think is the old D as C. Looking in "my computer" I see a C and D.

I have the C on SATA 1 and the other one on SATA 2. Didn't know if that is dual-boot. Remember I am using WinXP and never installed a dual-boot program. Just checking.

Thanks a bunch. Sure appreciate it.

Swen
 
Write down the model numbers of the new and old drives. In the BIOS, checkthat the new drive is set to boot over the old one in HDD Boot Priority. Then once in Windows just format the other drive listed as D:\
 
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