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I have a Windows XP installation. Recently, I purchased Norton Ghost 14.0 and Partition Magic 8.0, which I am not yet completely familiar with.
My machine has two internal hard drives. We'll call them C: (80gb) and E: (120gb). I've also got an external USB drive (750gb) for backups, and a 500gb internal drive that is still fresh in the box.
There's only enough room in my machine for two internal hard drives, unless I do something clever with the unused CD/DVD bay or temporarily use some sort of mutant IDE-to-USB external converter. So I'd like to have the largest two non-USB drives in my machine -- the new blank 500gb one and the 120gb drive (which is currently E:). This would require relocating the contents of C: to another drive, however. I figured perhaps I could do something like this.
I'm fairly sure these first three steps would work, with proper use of Ghost.
1. Copy all of E: to the USB drive via Ghost in some fashion.
2. Remove the E: drive, then install and format the 500gb drive.
3. Copy the Ghosted contents of E: that are on the USB drive over to the 500gb drive.
I'm not so sure about this continuation.
4. Remove the 500gb drive and put E: back in.
5. Completely erase (reformat) E:.
6. Use Ghost to make a perfect copy of everything on C: onto E:, including all system-related files.
Would it then be realistic to remove C: and install E: in its place, from a software perspective? Assume that I can get the jumpers and cabling correct. Or are there things that care about the physical identity of the original C: that will get annoyed by the presence of this interloper that is claiming to be C:?
If there's anything else stupid about this that I might overlook, go ahead and point it out. Or if Partition Magic would assist in this process in some fashion. I'm more of a Linux guy, so my Windows knowledge isn't that great.
I concur with your co-worker. Remove the E drive and replace it with your new 500gig drive (the new E drive). Save you a lot of work. You’ll also now have a lot of room for backup files, data, etc. We all know someone who could use a spare 120gig drive. Or/and you could buy a ide/usb converter and dock it as an external drive for more pictures, music, etc…
As a side note, I chatted about this with a co-worker today. His reaction was that I should just give up on the 120gb disk, because it’s not worth all that effort for 40gb (E: is 40 gb more than C:) when that amount of disk space is so inexpensive. He may have a point there.