make my D: a C: and my C: a D:

[Wojtek]

As the topic says heh: how can I make my D: a C: and my C: a D:

C is 120gb
D is 300gb

I want the bigger one as the main one and use the smaller for backups/file holding.

They both have windows on them. I know my partition magic has an option to change drive letters. If i use that, will I screw up windows on the drives?

What would be the best solution?

[Bruce]

You can't change the drive letter of a drive that has a Windows install. Well, you can, but it will screw up the registry and nothing will work.

Your boot drive doesn't have to be "C" though. Just boot to your D drive instead.

[Wojtek]

one more question bruce,
is there a way to overlap say 20gb from each drive, kind of like a raid thing but with no raid controller? to keep important stuff there, so if one fails, i'll be able to salvage form second?

[Bruce]

With RAID (hardware or software), it's the entire drive or nothing.

Windows XP is only capable of software RAID 0 (striping), which is not what you'd want anyway.

My advice would be to get an external enclosure for a hard drive and back up any important data to that, or burn it to CD/DVD.

[Wojtek]

Well, you can, but it will screw up the registry and nothing will work.
What about if I do a search and replace on the D: drive and replace every instance of D: in the registry with C:

reboot in the C: drive, lauch PM and switch letters

C: would work, D: would not

that would the trick no?

[Bruce]

Theoretically that should work, but it seems like a hassle.

I wouldn't bother. That's why I have one box where F is my Windows drive.

[Wojtek]

meh, my thing won't work

vista dosnt have a boot.ini file and in msconfig it says boot from D: and no way to change it.

C: is my XP drive w/ important stuff
D: is my Vista Drive w/ nothing

maybe I could do this:
1) upgrade C: to vista
2) reformat D:
3) install xp on D:
4) transfer important stuff from C: to D:
5) reformat C:
6) Clean install Vista on C:
7) reformat and repartition D: for backup/data storage

"How to complicate things in 7 easy steps" haha

[heymrdj]

Let me clear you up on this. I screwed up 160GB of IMPORTANT data messing with a dual boot config with Linux. I screded up and tried to use the windows disk which screwed everything. Your being too experimental. DO yourself a favor. Take out the drive with your stuff on it and just work with vista. When your done toying put back in the drive with your stuff.

[Wojtek]

'too experimental' heh. I guess. Im planning on running vista beta 5342 as my main OS :)

I think I got it right this time.
I figured why install the 300gb drive as the main drive? keep it secondary.
but I still wanted to have my windows on C:

I had to:
1) uninstall sp2 to install system recovery console
2) fixboot from recovery console, that took care of the vista bootloader
3) D: drive stoped working
4) found out +128gb drives is sp2 only
5) reinstalled sp2
6) repartitioned D: drive into 3 partitions. websites/audiodev/downloads
7) transfering important stuff im keeping to D: drive
8) last step will be to to a clean vista install over the C: drive

So what I'll have here is only one OS, no dualboot. Vista Crashes, no prob. I have my stuff on D: :)

[heymrdj]

Remember the OS drive keeps your boot records. You lose your OS and I believe you can lsoe your partitions... I may be wrong though. Anyone hear got experience on that?

[Bruce]

Better you than me.

I just use one of those drive trays with the removable racks. :p