CryptikSoul

I've got 2 hard drives. "C:" has Windows XP, "D:" is for storage. I want to change them around so Windows is on the "D:". Can I just simply copy and paste the contents of "C:" onto "D:" and vice versa, or am I oversimplifying this in some way?

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Redjake

I don't think it would work if you just put both drives in a 2nd computer and copied it straight. It might, but I doubt it. You most likely need something like Norton Ghost to do it. But I've never tried it before. Good question.

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cyrnel

Yes, it can be done, but it's a bit painful. There are numerous ways to make mistakes and burn a day recovering. I've never written it up so I'm hesitant to send you into a culdesac.

Is one drive all C and the other all D?

The easiest way would be like Redjake said. If you have a third drive. Even if temporarily. Clone C to X, D to C, and X to D. Exchange C and D drives (cable & master/slave positions) as needed. Done.

If you want to get sick and there's free space on one drive for the contents of the other, you could say save D to an image file on C, clone C to D, exchange hardware positions, then restore the image of D.

Clone utils can be expensive or free, though the free ones usually require a bit more care. Free ones don't generally handle image files gracefully.

This kind of thing isn't needed much anymore with the price of drives.

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leftwingx

Not only would you have to take an image of your current Windows install, you would have to change the destination drive to be your new C: drive. Otherwise a great deal of your registry entries would be invalid.

If you don't want to bother with the image it's probably easiest to just re-install Windows on your D: drive and copy your settings from your C:\Windows installation.

MikeSty

Using norton ghost and imaging is the way to go, period.

rlbond86

I'm pretty sure you can also use partitionmagic, but Ghost is the simplest way.