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How do I change my "System" disk?

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win_dir
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:31 pm    Post subject: How do I change my "System" disk? Reply with quote

Hi all, well back with another question. I need to change my "System" disk to drive C or D. I am using win 2k. Just have a look at the screenshot below and you'll see that i have C & D on one drive and i have E on another. what i would like to do is move whatever there is of the system from E to C or D without having to reformat.



P.S if you have to scroll to view the whole of the screenshot then i will try to edit my post and make the screenshot smaller or link to it or something.
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saman
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:53 pm    Post subject: Chnaging drive letters Reply with quote

You could do this to change drive letters in Win200:
Changing Drive Letters
4/1/01

If you want to change the letters assigned to your fixed or removable drives:

1. Right Click on My Computer
2. Select Manage
3. Select Disk Management

For a Fixed Disk:
1. Select it
2. Right click
3. Select Change Drive Letter and Path
4. Click on the Edit button
5. Enter in the letter you want to use


For a Removable Disk:
1. In the lower, right hand panel, right click on the Disk or CD ROM #
2. Select Change Drive Letter and Path
3. Click on the Edit button
4. Enter in the letter you want to use

I have bolded the parts that you have to do, but of course who can't just change the letter of the system drive to D or E as they are already taken, so you have to change the letter of one of the drives to something that is not taken, for exmpale change D: to Z: and then change the system drive to D:, after that you may changethe Z: drive to C: drive if you like. This is very easy, only a bit of creatibility is needed
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win_dir
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Excuse me for my maybe strange logic here but isn't E: still my system partition whichever letter i change it to?

ALSO. Just tried to change the partition letter that is lettered E and it gave me the error message: "Cannot change your drive letter of your system or boot volume"

More ideas, please people?
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saman
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:13 pm    Post subject: Fine..... Reply with quote

Quote:
Excuse me for my maybe strange logic here but isn't E: still my system partition whichever letter i change it to?

Its fine, you can change them to whatever you want.
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win_dir
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I know i can change them to whatever letter i want but the boot/system data is still going to be on the partition i am calling E because the BIOS does not read in drive letters it just reads the boot records.

You seeing what i mean? I want my drive to put on one of my linux boxes!
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saman
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 10, 2003 11:56 pm    Post subject: Mm..... Reply with quote

I see what you mean now, but I think you would find that really hard and time consuming to do as you have to move the files on both partitions and change the MBR and boot.ini settings, you might also get problems on wrong paths and shortcuts, but that can be fixed easily using an of the available shortcut-testers.
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win_dir
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

thats what i thought, but how do i save or transfer the MBR? Anyone know any tools for doing so?
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Chozen1
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 1:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cant u ghost it?

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win_dir
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 6:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As in the norton ghost that you have to pay for?
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saman
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:42 pm    Post subject: Why? Reply with quote

I hope this is not a personal question, but you didn't say why in the first place do you want to move the partitions??
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win_dir
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I want to move my system partition because i don't use my second drive and i might as well have a look at freebsd or something on my other box which i took the hard drive from in the first place.

I'm going to be getting cut off from the internet for a few days later next week anyway so i'll reinstall windows then.
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saman
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:43 pm    Post subject: MBR Reply with quote

I know that you could repair the MBR by running "fix /MBR" in Win XP, but I'm not sure if it works in Win2k.
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win_dir
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When do i run that? while running windows or or do i have to start using the recovery disk or something?
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 10:01 pm    Post subject: MBR Reply with quote

Yeah...You have to go to the recovery console, but I stand by what I said, I'm not sure of this works in Win2k. You will get loads of articles on that if you go to the Microsoft's Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo
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siarad
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 10:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Seems to me you're crying for the moon. If you move to another drive all the references will be to the original drive so won't work.
Do you boot from E drive by changing BIOS settings in which case it's treated as C & the following will work?
Free Xxcopy http:\\www.xxcopy.com will copy the entire contents of a drive like this for copying E to C:-
xxcopy E:\ C:\ /clone
Your BIOS picks up boot-sectors of HDD which run the OS. If you've used a boot manager you could get into trouble, a lot more information is needed.
If you want to change any HDD to boot as C:-
Download free Ranish 243 http://www.ranish.com/part, it's a text file so you may need to open browser. If you don't use ZipMagic like me then first you'll have to unzip the download. Put in a floppy, double click part243 which opens it Push the A key & Enter to make the boot-able floppy & follow the instructions which really means pushing Enter key 3 times & Esc to close. There you have it, boot from the floppy holding the control key which runs Ranish or without to MSDOS boot. Select which HDD to use, key down to the partition you wish to boot, push B key to make boot-able then F2 to store & Ctrl Alt Del to restart removing the floppy post haste.
You may like to check:-
http://www.security-forums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=400&start=15
I put all this as I don't understand what you're after due to lack of information so none may be appropriate but it saves time.
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win_dir
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 19, 2003 11:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, i think we have concluded here that there is certainly no easy way of doing this operation with 100% success, although i do not know if there is any way at all. Anyway, i relieved the computer of its duty to another computer temporarily and just backed up and reformatted without the second drive. Although i had to repartition it several times for some strange reason. Thanks for your help everyone, i'm sure i'll need it again in the future sometime.
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