Changing Boot drives

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DTTNBguy wrote:
how would you go about changing your boot drives? i just bought a larger hard drive, and i already have the contents of my old hard drive (windows install and everything) copied but i cant figure out how to do this, the hard drive (mapped as D) doesnt show up in my boot menu. also, ive never done this before so if you have steps, plz make sure there thourough and include if any of my drives will be formatted in the process. ive been using my new hard drive for about a week and have an extra 130gb on it that i dont want lost.

The proper way to switch boot drives is to put the new one on the end of the data cable, the old on the middle (assuming you have PATA not SATA drives).  Of course, you had to have made the new drive bootable by either installing Windows XP on it or using the drive manufacturer's software to copy old to new.

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DTTNBguy wrote:
dimension 2400, both PATA drives

used driveimageXML to copy drives, and if i replace my old drive with my new one, bios freezes, i get a keyboard failure, which pretty much means pressing F2 or F12 aint gonna help you, and it wont boot.

 

Both must be jumpered as Cable Select.  If you copy old to new, and then you reboot before switching drives, it won't work.  I tell people to put new on end of cable, THEN copy old to new, then reboot.

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DTTNBguy wrote:
sooooo...my problem still exists, is there any way to fix it now without reformatting my new drive again, theres already 250gb of new data on it which will take months to get again.

 

I'm confused.  Did you do what I said?  And how can there be 250gb of data on it when you can't get it to work per your post?

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DTTNBguy wrote:
my new drive was already working but only as a secondary storage drive, not my primary boot drive, what im trying to do is make it my primary boot.

sorry if i lead you down the wrong path

Then you have two options since you don't want to lose the data:

 

1) Partiton the drive into two partitions, with the data you don't want to lose on the 2nd partition, then PROPERLY copy the old boot drive to the first partition of the new drive using the drive manufacturer's software,

 

or

 

2) Do the first step above, then install XP on the first partition, then drivers, update XP, then software.

 

Note - if you "copied" XP and programs as you noted original, you should know that you can't do that.  Either use a drive manufacturer's software or a disk imaging product.