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Summary: While moving Windows from one hard drive to another is theoretically possible, it's likely to have issues and is not recommended.
I added a larger hard drive to my PC (now I have 2). I also upgraded
from XP Home to XP Pro. But the Home is on the original drive and the Pro is on
the new drive. I don't know how this happened this way. Is there anyway to get
the Pro version off the new drive and over to the original drive without having
to reformat the drives?
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My first concern would be why the situation arose in the first place. There
are approaches to moving the operating system, but my advice is not to.
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When you add a hard drive, it's usually designated in the BIOS as primary or
secondary. Primary is of course, the boot drive, and is where Windows expects
to be installed. Typically when you install a second drive it will be the
secondary, and not participate in the boot process at all.
If your new drive had been installed as primary by mistake, I would have
expected your first reboot thereafter to fail, because the new drive would not
have an operating system on it. Unless, perhaps, your BIOS is smart enough to
check all drives.
When you install Windows, it will also present you with an opportunity to
upgrade in existing installation or set up a new one. In the latter case, you
could certainly have selected the new drive.
But the bottom line is that why it installed on the new drive may
impact the success of the suggestions to follow.
Moving an existing installation of Windows is theoretically
possible, but I would consider it risky. I'd expect it would be easy for many
things to go wrong, putting you back where you started, or worse.
So the ultimate answer to your question is no, I would not recommend
attempting to move the operating system.
In your shoes I would try one thing: swapping the hard drives. I started by
pointing out that the drives are primary and secondary, and it's apparently
installed the new operating system on the wrong drive. Make that drive the
primary, and see if that results in what you want. Exactly how to do this will
vary on your motherboard, your bios, and your drive types. And ultimately,
it may not work. Depending on the exact configuration you ended up
with, I can think of several issues that might invalidate this attempt.
That brings me to what I'd expect to be required: reinstall. Or rather,
re-upgrade, making sure that the upgrade happens to the drive you expect. I
might even go so far as to remove the second drive, perform the upgrade, make
sure it's all working and then re-install the new drive, and make sure that
you're still booting form the old one with the properly upgraded operating
system.
Article 444 | Posted September 8, 2004
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Ok - I've read through the article and comments, and am still somewhat confused.
Here is my situation. I have 2 physical drives, a 6 GB drive that is the primary (C:) drive, and which has Win XP on it. The 2nd is a 80 GB that is the slave, and is partitioned into 2 sections (D: [50GB] and E: [30GB]). Several months ago, in order to save space, I changed my windows documents/temp folders to the E: drive. This has worked well.
6 GB is not enough to house Win XP any longer, though. I recently replaced the MB/Proc/memory, and ended up (for some reason) having to reinstall Windows, again onto C:, and this is proving problematic to upgrade properly for lack of space - I have basically trimmed all non-essential files, and still am short.
So I want to move my OS onto the D: drive, but without really losing any info on any drive, as restoring backups is painful. I do not really want to change the partition scheme on the big drive unless I really have to, and/or it makes a LOT of sense to do so. What is the best course of action? I am to the point of considering buying a new (bigger) hard drive and just doing a clean install on to it, then manually transferring other files to it from the 6 GB, which will then be a F: drive, or just go in the bin. The down side to this is that my wife will kill me if I spend another penny on the computer...
Any ideas?
Posted by: Christian Knudsen at August 29, 2007 11:58 AMMy hd is fried and wont boot to it. Error message
Posted by: mel kurchal at September 3, 2007 5:40 PMsays it cant find it.
Can I install windows to an external hd after I change the boot order?
thanks Leo
Concerning the original question, I found this:
From: http://www.futurehardware.in/63575.htm
Moving Win XP to new drive problem. Note more >>>'s mean older parts of thread.
[Copyrighted Material Removed, See Website Link]
Posted by: Jopower at September 29, 2007 4:13 PM2nd post on this subject from me:
From: http://windows.ittoolbox.com/documents/popular-q-and-a/moving-windows-xp-to-a-new-hard-disk-2263
[Copyrighted Material Removed, See Website Link]
Posted by: Jopower at September 29, 2007 4:19 PMHow do I move the pagefile.sys off c: to another drive
Posted by: bijith at December 5, 2007 10:49 PMHi,
I've done that many times with NT, 2000 and XP:
Boot on an other system than the one to copy otherwise some files cannot be copied (registries).
Copy system directory to new location including on other drive.
Edit boot.ini file to make an option to boot to the new directory.
Boot into the new system.
Set the drives letters like you want then reboot.
Edit the registry to replace every occurrence of old paths by the new ones. Repeat until no more is left.
Reboot. Now the older system should no longer be used. Backup the original system to be careful.
If you want , delete it. Reboot. Now you'll know if it's allright or not. Check system logs.
I can't remember of a problem arising after that method was applied and I've used it many times. But it can always happen with peculiar applications. Some Unix-fashioned applications may require you to edit their config files to substitute some paths. Anyway this is not a Windows issue.
As far as the aforementioned Windows are concerned, this method is reliable..
This explanation is given to the best of my knowledge but I don't give ANY garanty or liability about it and the one who uses this method is supposed to be knowledgeable in IT, understand that he may lose data, and assume his decision to try it.
Patrick Bouster
Posted by: Patrick Bouster at January 18, 2008 3:28 AMhi, i have a very small 8 gig hard drive running as the main c drive with windows xp in it. i also have a 250 gig drive installed with a lot of stuff saved onto it. the c drive is very low on space and requires me to clean it up often after using the internet. how do i change the new 250 gig drive into the main drive for the computer for temorary internet files to save in and also so that i can have enough space to install macromedia studio?
Posted by: joggen g at March 9, 2008 11:15 PMMy Win XP Pro 64 bit is on the only hard drive and it's labeled J:.
Posted by: ByteGuy at May 4, 2008 3:15 PMI have tried changing the drive letter to c: but it won't let me.
I was wondering if I install another hard drive and give it the c: drive letter,
and move Win XP to the c:drive from the j: drive, will it work and boot the computer?
Leo,
I added a 2nd hard drive for more space. My original drive is almost full and I am unsure of how to move files to the new drive. I'm not a computer Guru so is there a simple way to move like music files, for instance, to the new drive and if so, what will need to be changed or reset to be able to access them on the new drive. I'm very illiterate about how this works. It's a Dell PC. I know if I download anything new I need to choose the new drive to put it on, but don't know how to get to these files if I do that, especially my music. Can you help me?
Thanks for your time.
Sherry
Posted by: Sherry Jolly at May 14, 2008 8:55 PMHi Leo,
Posted by: kk at October 4, 2008 12:12 AMI have done my own research and have been able to "transplant" windows from one pc to the other without reinstalling. VMware uses the same trick for p2v conversion.
The trick is to somehow grab windows folder and copy it to the other machine and set boot.ini setting in boot file there.
I use sysinternals utility, but you can use bart pe, windows pe.
first somehow make driver backup of the source machine using driver backup utility.
then make a copy of windows folder using file sync or cd based booting such as bart pe.
if you make copy of windows while running windows using utility such as filesync, u cannot copy registry files. in that case copy registry file from the repair folder. to main system32\config folder
once you have system folder ready copy it to usb pen drive. also copy boot.ini to pen drive.
insert pen drive in target machine
now go to target machine, boot using boot cd such as bart pe, format the drive and make partition active, copy windows folder and boot.ini to the partition.
now remove the cd and try to boot the machine, chances are that it will boot, if it does not boot that means your storage controller in target machine is different. in that case you need to edit registry file for different storage controller, there are two types of storage controllers so there is 50% chance that u will not need to do this. There is an msdn article on this issue, i can send it later.
now when it boots it will not find documents and settings folder, it will complain but will creates them.
alternately you can copy documents and settings folder too.
later you can copy display, network and sound driver should the hardware be different.