Drive letters mixed up after installing new drive

[jford]

Western Digital Customer Support is useless...They keep referring me to generic FAQ's....Can anyone offer me suggestions for the following problem?:

I bought a new WD 120G hard drive and I moved my old 20G drive to the slave cable position (cable select jumper position)and put the 120G drive in the master position(cable select jumper position). I used the WD Data Lifeguard tools to format new drive and copy 20g to 120g drive. After reboot, the 120g drive is labeled D:. If I remove 20g drive from slave position, XP Pro will not boot. I called Cust Service and was told to remove 20g drive and use repair option on XP CD. When I try that, it tells me that there is no valid installation of XP on the 120g drive and does not give me a "repair" option. With the 20g drive removed, I deleted the partition on the 120g drive and started from scratch, with the same result. XP's administrative tools say drive 0 is 120g d: drive with system files - drive 1 is the 20g c: drive with page file. Both are FAT 32 drives.

I have almost the identical computer at home and added the same model 120g drive and had no problem with the installation and copy.

Bottom line: New drive is D: and will not boot (xp splash screen just freezes) Old drive is C:. I want to copy the old 20G hard drive and make its drive letter d: and have the system boot up from new drive and make its drive letter c:. Thanks!

[cheezy]

This is a crude method of changing to a new drive but it worked for me.

First set up the new drive as a slave and boot using the old one. To do this make sure the new drive has the jumper positions set to slave and the secondary IDE cable connected, and make sure the old drive has the jumper positions set to master and the primay IDE cable connected. Then, instead of using the manufacturer's rubbish software, copy absolutely everything from the old drive to the new one manually, making sure all the paths are the same. Then shut down, and swap over the drives again. Make sure the jumper settings are correct on both drives, many drives have different arrangements for master and slave. It's best to check the drive manual or manufacturers website for this.

One other thing to note is that the comp shouldnt be set up to use the boot loader if you just want to boot from one drive (You can turn it off in the My Computer properties). Before you copy everything across the drive to boot from should be set to c.

If all goes well the computer should boot exactly as before only you'll have an extra 100gb on drive c. Don't take my word for it though, other members of the forum probably have better ideas...

[lglance]

well pal you got a big mess
it might be easier to start over with a clean installation
first thing dump the cable select setting make the drive on the end of the cable master that would be the 120 gig
make the 20gig a slave thats the drive in the middle
go in to the bios or system setup and confirm that the 120 gig drive is selected as the boot device
This may not solve your problems but it is the best place to start
I believe the drive letter problem is related to the master boot of the primary partion
first make sure that 120 gig fat32 primary partion is set active

microsofts dos bootloader looks for the first primary partion c: drive that is set active.
starting at drive 0 then working on up chain

[glc]

1. Remove the 120 gig drive.

2. Put the 20 gig in as standalone using cable select on the end connector.

3. Boot it up, make sure everything is correct (seen as the C drive).

4. Convert it to NTFS by opening a command prompt and typing convert c: /fs:ntfs

5. Shut down when done and move the 20 gig to the center connector, jumper the 120 to cable select and put on end connector.

6. Boot with the DLG disk and clone the 20 to the 120.

7. Shut down and remove the 20 gig.

8. Boot it and make sure everything is right.

9. Format a floppy and use the XP option to make it a MS-DOS boot disk.

10. Download Delpart from http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm and copy it to the boot floppy.

11. Shut down and remove the 120 gig drive, reinstall the 20 gig.

12. Boot with the bootdisk and run delpart, delete the partition on the 20 gig.

13. Shut down and reinstall the 120 gig on the end connector and the 20 gig on the center, cable select.

14. Boot it up and use XP's Disk Management to partition the 20 gig for storage.

[jford]

I will try it on Monday when I am back in the office and let you know how it turns out!

[arubahounds]

glc, funny but the DLG disk gives you an option to copy disks, but it doesn't explicity say its going to clone them.

I just came across the identical issue today except that my original boot disk was already ntfs. Using the WD software I copied my old boot disk to a new wd 1200jb. Trying to boot with the new disk alone, the system hangs at the splash.

jford, I'd be interested to know if you get it working. At the moment I just did a fresh install on the new wd and will hold my old boot disk on the side until I get a better clone utlity.

[azscary]

I also had no luck with the WD software so I ordered Norton Ghost 2003 for $37.00.

[arubahounds]

Here's wd's page describing the proper copy procedure along with a set of scenarios that will cause the copy to fail. I probably fall into one of them since I've used Partition Magic to format the drive.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....cGFnZT0x&p_li=

[jford]

No problem through step 6. DLG got to 17% copy then frooze. Tried again, same thing. Downloaded another copy of DLG, tried again, same thing.

Any other way to clone 20G to 120G?

Thanks!

[andyms18a]

boot from your 20gig drive and run check disk by opening my computer right click the drive select properties then tools and the first one is error checking hit the check now it may say you knead to restart to run check disk if so restart and let check disk scan the hard drive when it finished try dlg again

[azscary]

Originally posted by azscary I also had no luck with the WD software so I ordered Norton Ghost 2003 for $37.00.

[glc]

Run an extended drive test on the 120 with the DLG, the drive may be defective. You are using DLG 10.x, right?

[jford]

I had checked the integrity of the drive before I started, but a few files got corrupted in the process....

I ran scandisk again and had success using DLG copy...

Thanks for all of your help!!!!