[westerly]

Hello everyone.

I have three hard drives on my machine, 2 x 80gig and 1 x 60gig.

The 60gig is a Seagate and is my main C drive with O/S XP Pro sp2, but it is making
noises now and the Seagate tool shows it is on its way out!

My other two HDD's (E & F) are running ok and I use them to store progs and my genealogy,

F is pretty full (65gig) but E has very little on it and I am thinking if I can format E
and then install XP Pro sp2, followed by a migration of my current C across to E
and then remove the failing C drive.

I assume I will have to relocate the jumper on E to make it the primary drive!.

Am I thinking along the right lines, or can someone assist me thanks.

westerly.

[Mike0001]

Perfectly correct! If you can afford Norton Ghost or another disk copy it will do the disk copy for you. Even better, a Live Linux distro CD will do it for free.

If you do a fresh install, first set old E: as master and old C: as slave, and physically swap their cables. Copying data will then be simple. On no account jumper them the same or you may lose all data on both!

[westerly]

Hello Mike.

Thanks for the reply.

I thought I was on the right track, but at 70 I'm not as quick on the uptake
as I used to be.

I have Acronis Migrate Easy v7 so I guess that should do the job ok.

I am glad you mentioned the IDE cable!, so I need to put the current E drive after format and
O/S reload onto the same IDE cable as current C and make it the primary, I cant leave it on
the IDE cable it is on now?

I appreciate your comments.

westerly.

[Mike0001]

There are two ways the IDE system decides which is primary and which slave. One is to move jumpers on both of them. The other is cable select, where it is the cable that decides which is which. In that case both drives are jumpered to CS.

If your old and new drives are on the same cable, you can simply rejumper them. That may apply to you.

However, if they are on separate IDE cables you will almost certainly want to swap them physically too, as you will want the new one on the primary IDE cable. Of course, just physically swapping the cables over may work better. (eg, at the motherboard.)

Be cautious. First, after the copy, ONLY connect the new HDD when you reboot, and make sure that is safe. Then connect the others. First time, windows will tell you your drives have changed and make you reboot anyway.

All the best.