Need to change my partitions around - what to use?

[whisper]

Here's the situation:

Until yesterday, I was using a WD IDE 80gb drive as my primary (and only) HDD and I had two partitions on it. One was a ~7gb partition for windows (XP pro) and the other was ~70gb partition for everything else. The small one was C: and the larger was D:

I just installed a new Seagate 7200.7 SATA drive which I'm running a new installation of windows XP on (also XP pro), and it's just a single big partition. I left my old IDE drive intact when I installed this new one, so I actually can boot off either one now. For some reason windows installation decided to call my new drive D: while my original 7gb partition on the WD drive remained C:, and the large parition on the old drive got renamed to E:

Here's what I'd like to do:

1. Join the two partitions on my old WD drive into one, preferably named D: and without losing the data that's on them.

2. Rename my new SATA drive C:

I don't want to install windows on my old drive (in fact I plan to remove that installation) so I'm not sure if using the windows set-up utility is the best idea. What utility is the best/most reliable to manage partitions, and can do what I want? Will I have to buy it or is there something I can get for free?

[dave_graham]

Partition Magic works pretty well.

cheers,

dave

[whisper]

Yeah, I've heard of that and heard that it works for a lot of people. I would have no problem trying it, but since I don't need to manage partitions on a regular basis I have a hard time justifying the $50-70 expense (depending on where you purchase). I just need something that can do what I need to do right now, sort of like a one-time thing (or lets say once every year or so perhaps, depending on what happens down the road).

Are there any free apps out there that can deal with partitions, or is there a way to do it using DOS or something like that? I don't mind dealing with commands and such, it doesn't have to be littered with eye candy to work correctly :p

[dave_graham]

try looking @ sourceforge.net

cheers,

dave

[LadyJaqie]

if the partitions are NTFS you cant change them with partition magic, at least not the old version I have.

only way *I* know to make an OS drive C from D or any other letter is to clean install with that the only drive in the system.

disabling the drive in BIOS doesnt even work, as win sees it anyway. go microsoft for forcing their way down our throats :rolleyes:

[Ugly_Jim]

You can resize/delete/move NTFS partitions with version 8.0(newest)

[whisper]

Well, I guess if I can't rename my D: drive to C: that's okay. I just got finished installing everything the way I like and it's working fine so I won't start from scratch again just to rename it to C: But I definitely still need to join the partitions on my old drive. So with partition magic 8, I should be okay then? All my partitions are NTFS. I saw it pretty cheap here:

http://datapunch.007-hosting.com/par1.htm

Does this seem legit or is it probably not the real thing or bogus somehow?

[Ugly_Jim]

You can change drive letters. Right click my computer, then go to manage, then disk management. Sorry, I should have mentioned this :-[

[Ice Czar]

OK there are a few issues you need to be aware of

for starters what you did and why the letter assignement is the way it is
if you where to remove your old drive, you wouldnt be able to boot to the new one

that is because the C:/ partition is your system partition and it contains the ntldr (NT loader) which is the "bootstrap" and boot.ini which points the bootstrap to the partition to actually boot to

what I recommend you do is remove your old drive
and the boot to the CD and do a repair install on the new drive

then transfer the data off the large partition of the old drive and delete that partition
then using partition magic, enlarge the partition (actually you could use diskpart.exe which is a free Windows commandline tool) and then transfer the data back

the alternative is to "merge" partitions, but if you elect to do that with partition magic, definately backup first, and the more complex functions like merge (or when your trying to do multiple things) in Partition Magic is when stuff can go wrong

so there you have 2 strategies, post back and I'll answer any additional questions

letters are generally assigned in this order (PATA)
-- Primary Master primary partition
-- Primary Slave primary partition
-- Secondary Master primary partition
-- Secondary Slave primary partition
-- Primary Master extended partition with logical drives
-- Primary Slave extended partition with logical drives
-- Secondary Master extended partition with logical drives
-- Secondary Slave extended partition with logical drives
-- Removable media (CD-ROM) or other software driven devices with drive letters

but its actually alot more complicated than that when you add in SCSI or IDE cards
SATA ports or simply the fact your allowed 4 Primary Partitions or 3 Primaary Partitions and One Extended Partition with its own Logical Drives per HDD :p

PS you cant change the drive letter of your system partition
but the way we will get you set up, youll bootstrap to the new drive
because you can select which drive you want to bootstrap to via the BIOS boot order
thus each will be independent (if one fails) and will dynamically be assigned letters
and we can even make them cross bootable in the boot.ini but the C:/ will still be the system partition you select from the BIOS boot order

confused yet? :p

[whisper]

Wow, Ice Czar, thanks for such a thorough reply. I didn't realize that my new windows installation was dependent on my old one, so to speak. Currently, when I boot up, I'm given the option which OS to load and I just assumed they were both completely separate entities. I'll probably have a few questions as I go through the steps you suggested, but for now I'll just start with two in particular:

1. I'm pretty sure that if I do a "repair", I will actually end up losing some settings. For example, all the windows updates that I did might have to be re-installed, and I'm not too confident that my norton systemworks 2003 will be totally intact anymore either. Finally, there are some external devices that might have to be re-installed as well (namely, iPod, canon digital camera, and canon scanner). I say this just because I've done windows repairs before and had problems like this. So if I have to go through that anyway, maybe I should just wipe the new drive clean and do a fresh instal instead of a repair?

2. If I remove my old drive and repair (or reinstal) windows on the new SATA drive, won't this drive get renamed to C? And if so, when I reconnect my old drive I should then have two volumes named C: which would seem problematic to me. Maybe I should wipe out my old C: partition too since as I said, I planned to get rid of this old windows installation anyway. If I take this route, then my plan would be as follows: use diskpart.exe to delete old C: partition on old drive, disconnect old HDD, boot up w/ windows instal CD and repair (or instal fresh) windows on the SATA drive, reconnect old drive which still has the D: partition, and use diskpart.exe to extend that D: partition the extra 7gb that remains.

What do you think? I'll be happy to just follow exactly as you suggested but I was wondering if the problems I mentioned above might be relevant and if my alternate plan could work as well?

Thanks, this is really educational:)

[Ice Czar]

1. a new install might be a good idea, wasnt sure how far into optimizing and tweaking it you where, you can export user settings, but as you mentioned it can still have issues with various aps and hotfixes\service packs

2. the C:/ drive youd see would depend on which HDD you boot to in the BIOS boot order
the other would dynamically be assigned a letter, and you never have 2 C:/ drives

I recommend that you name the drives in both disk management and we will edit the boot.ini to refer to them by names as well at the dual boot screen, as of right now that screen is only available from your old HDD but we'll set it up to cross boot with either drive as the "boot" drive, however to select which drive is going to be C:/ youd still need to point the BIOS boot order to the right HDD, as the C:/ drive will always be the System Partition

How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;234048)
BASIC Disk - Drive Letter Assignment Rules
The following are the basic disk drive letter assignment rules for Windows 2000:

Scan all fixed hard disks as they are enumerated*, assign drive letters starting with any active primary partitions (if there is one), otherwise, scan the first primary partition on each drive. Assign next available letter starting with C:

Repeat scan for all fixed hard disks and removable (JAZ, MO) disks and assign drive letters to all logical drives in an extended partition, or the removable disk(s) as enumerated. Assign next available letter starting with C:.

Finally, repeat scan for all fixed hard disk drives, and assign drive letters to all remaining primary partitions. Assign next available letter starting with C:.

Floppy drives. Assign letter starting with A:
CD-ROM drives. Assign next available letter starting with D:.
as they are enumerated being for the most part the above list I provided in the previous post, but the BIOS determines which channel is considered the Primary (I think :p ) the system partition assignment at least suggests that it works that way.

Definition of System and Boot Partition (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;100525)
System Partition
The system partition refers to the disk volume containing hardware specific files needed to boot Windows (NTLDR, BOOT.INI, and so on). On Intel x86-based machines, it must be a primary partition that has been marked active. On x86 machines, this is always drive 0, the drive the system BIOS searches during system boot for the operating system.

Boot Partition
The boot partition contains the Windows operating system files (usually \WINNT) and it support files (usually \WINNT\SYSTEM32). It can be the same partition as the system partition.

Changing the drive letter which you can do in Disk Management really starts to complicate the hell out of things when you are running multiple HDD with multiple partitions and dual booting thrown it, its damn near impossible to remember which install has what tweak, and the actual dynamic naming scheme with a little practice will tell you where you are, a naming scheme is far perferable, besides there are little tweaks you can use to overcome the "not C" hassels in say windows explorer ect

[whisper]

Hmmm, I'm beginning to see the tricky aspects of this now. I'm about to start my re-intallation on the new drive, with the old one disconnected. That should make my new drive both a boot volume AND a system volume, if I'm not mistaken? OK, so that's good. But then there's the issue of my old drive. It will still contain a system volume which I actually won't want anymore. Ideally, I just want one system volume (my new drive) and I want my old WD drive to be solely for storage (I don't want it to be a boot volume or a system volume). So how will I ultimately wipe that old drive clean once I connect it again, since I've looked around in the disk management utility and apparently it does not let you delete or reformat a system partition? It seems like there must be some way to completely start from scratch with a drive even if it was once used as a system or boot volume, but maybe not? Well, I'll worry about that in a little bit I suppose. First it's time to fix up my SATA drive...

[Ice Czar]

it wouldnt be a system partition when viewed from the other HDD
it only counts if you start the OS from it :p

however, you then see the advantages of a parallel install,
by allowing you to look sideways from a familiar GUI environment you can restore a backed up registry, run security scans from it, manage disks, ect, it neednt be big, say 5GB

[whisper]

Well, I just re-did everything now and fortunately everything worked out as I hoped.

I decided to use the windows instal CD to get rid of my old C: partition (on the WD IDE drive), by taking it to the point where you can create and delete partitions. Here you get a warning but it will still let you remove a system partition if you are "willing to accept" the data loss :p I did NOT delete the larger partition with all my data on it, of course. I aborted the installation, disconnected my IDE drive, started up the instal CD again, and successfully got windows on the SATA drive with the volume name of C. Cool. After getting the OS in reasonably good shape (windows updates, instal mobo and video drivers, etc.) I reconnected the IDE drive and now I pretty much have what I wanted. One system/boot drive (SATA) and the other for data and backup purposes.

But yes, I see the advantage of having parallel OS instals. I still have ~7gb of unpartitioned space on my old WD IDE drive, so I could create a partition there and instal windows. But I suppose it would not really be an independent installation unless I did it with the SATA disconected, correct?

Ice Czar - hanks for all the help dude. I sort of used my own method in the end, but it wouldn't have happened without all the info you provided :)

[Ice Czar]

your welcome

yes if you install with the SATA connected, its boot.ini would be rewritten to a dualboot, and no ntldr would be added to the PATA drive
as it would detect the previous insatll and ask which partition youd like to install to

for more info
Inside the Boot Process, Part 1 (http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?IssueID=62&ArticleID=3952)
Inside the Boot Process, Part 2 (http://www.winntmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=4711)
Understanding MultiBooting (http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/) & Multibooting Principles (http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm)
worth reading through at least once
and remembering where to find them in need
which would be the FAQ > Advanced HDD Issues Linkfarm ;)

[pikawel]

Well, this thread saved me the trouble of asking exactly the same thing (minus the bit about the partition merging... yadda yadda).

In a nutshell, if I disconnect my old primary drive (IDE... currently C:\) and do a repair install on what I want to be my new primary drive (SATA... currently D:\) then it will become C:\?

I just want to make sure I fully understand before I commit any changes. Ice Czar, you're invaluable to this community.

[Ice Czar]

if you have multiple drives each with ntldrs the one you point the BIOS to and actualy load (ntldr / NTLoader) from will be the C: (System Partition)


If your doing such dynamic stuff
Id highly advise against any kind of letter reassignment within any of the OSs
(not that you can typically reassign C: anyway)
after awhile your able to "read" what is happening and where you are based on how the letters get assigned, use names for the partitions ;)

Thus its real easy to see which drive the BIOS is pointing to

[pikawel]

Yeah... it looks like I just need to back everything up and disconnect my IDE drives for a Windows reinstall.

My SATA drive is set as a boot drive but, of course, my IDE drive is still the system disc. So, unless I want to choose which copy of Windows to use each time, I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't make any seperate partitions on my IDE drive. On the SATA drive, I've got a 20GB partition... which will have to have Windows reinstalled over it, I suppose.

I've tried setting SCSI/SATA as the first boot and having nothing else. It won't work. I guess it's time to read those massive articles :P

-Ash

[Ice Czar]

actually you should just be able to boot to the recovery console and write a Master Boot Record and ntldr to that drive

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm# > How to Repair the Boot Sector
alternately a repair install
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm# > How to Repair Windows XP by Installing Over top of Existing Setup: