Second Hard Drive...

[david17]

I recently purchased a new hard drive as my old one ran out of space.  I installed the newbie and Norton Ghosted all the files from my old one onto the new larger one.  I really have no use for the old one, except as a backup, and I was wondering how do I change the new hard drive's letter (E) to make a new (C) drive so I can take out the old Hard Drive.  I've tinkered with Disk Management but it wont let me change the current (C) drive (my old hard drive).  So my question is how do I make the new hard drive become a (C) Windows drive so I can remove my old hard drive completely and just use the new one from now on?

[ianbell]

You didn't specify your o/s but what should work is to physically remove all the hd's from the computer (unplug it first!) and then attach the new hd to the last [s/be black] plug on the ribbon cable after checking that it is configured as a 'master' -  plug computer back in and fire up - as it fires up open the bios and, depending on your o/s either check that the new drive is showing correctly or have the system 'auto detect' it.
After that is done and working, if you want to keep the old drive as well you can re-configure it as a 'slave' and install it on the middle [s/be grey] plug on the ribbon cable.

[patio]

The new drive will need to be empty to do this...so move your Ghost image or burn it to CD/DVD.

Then Travel Here  for instructions.

[david17]

Sorry I wasn't specific...I have Windows XP SP2.  My original hard drive is an IDE Seagate 40G unit that has no more space available.  My new hard drive is a SATA Samsung 160G unit.  Therefore I dont have to worry about jumpers (phew).  My goal is to transfer all the data off the 40G HDD to the 160G HDD and then remove the 40G and use the 160G HDD as my C: drive.  The problem is after I ghosted all the data over including the master boot record, removed the 40G HDD and restarted the computer it would not advance past the welcome screen.  I assumed that this was because my new 160G HDD was named E drive...not C drive and therefore windows didnt know what to do.  I reattached the old HDD and it boots up fine but the problem remains...How do I make the new SATA 160G HDD the C drive? What do I need to do to make the 160G HDD capable of running my computer?  Thanks guys..

[david17]

I think the problem essentially boils down to the fact that the new HDD is SATA whereas the old one is IDE.  When I remove the old HDD then there is no master drive for the computer, so it doesnt know where to load from.  Can someone please tell me how to change the designation of SATA drive and make it the drive that windows loads from.  Thanks...

[patio]

Wipe the info from the Seagate.
Travel to their site and DLoad the Seatools package (Free )
Use the tools to create a bootable CD.
Boot to the CD and select the "clone" option to clone the 40G to the Seagate.
When finished remove the CD and power down.
Disconnect the 40G from the system.
Voila re-boot and you should be good to go.

[david17]

thanks for the advice...I checked out the Seatools thing, but in the end I didn't need it.  My problem was due to the fact that I formatted the SATA HDD using the disk manage option on Windows.  The problem being that I gave the HDD a drive letter.  I have since found that Norton Ghost can copy everything I need and format the drive into what I want.  So after two days of fiddling I finally achieved what I wanted and it only takes Ghost 22 minutes.  You dont need a boot CD or the Windows CD, I would thoroughly recommened Ghost just for the simplicity.  Thanks again everyone. 

[patio]

After you finish installing all your apps and protection programs and everything is as you want make sure to create a brand new Ghost image as there is new hardware involved.