I am trying to install a new larger hard drive while keeping the smaller hard drive for backups. I ghosted the existing drive to the new drive and have them properly set with the new larger drive as master and the older drive as slave. All of my data is showing up on the new drive but the new drive is listed as E instead of C and the pc won't boot from the new drive. If I remove the old drive it won't boot at all. What is going wrong that is preventing it from recognizing the new drive as C? It is listed as master in the cmos.

Recommended Answers

All 12 Replies

To change the drive letter assignment for a disk or CD-ROM drive

to open the System Properties dialog box.
Click the Device Manager tab.
Click the plus sign next to the type of drive, and then double-click the disk or CD-ROM drive for which you want to change the letter.
Click the Settings tab.
Under Reserved drive letters, change the drive letter assignment.
Notes
You can also open the System Properties dialog box by clicking Start, pointing to Settings, clicking Control Panel, and then double-clicking System.
If the option to change the drive letter assignment is unavailable, you cannot change the drive letter.
This is found in Win 98 SE, help

I had already tried that but it won't let you change a drive to C. And I don't just want to change the drive letter, I want it to boot from the new drive and not the old one.

I am not familiar with as you say "Ghosting" I assume you made a drive copy with the original drive being "C", to the New Drive "D". I have a Program "Drive Copy" There are several things that it requires before making a copy of the old drive to the new one.
1. Open case and mount the second drive.
2. Reorient the New Master drive to the master position on the ide cable
and the old drive to slave position on the cable, of course set the jumpers accordingly.
3. Restart and enter Bios to set "auto detect" on.
4. Restart and Start copy program with bootable diskette made with
copy program.
5. Select "replace" to copy from source to destination. At this time the program will display the drive letters, which should be Source "D" and Destination "C".
6. If you are then successful in making the new Master drive "C" then after rebooting you should find the old drive to be the slave "D"
I have not done this but as I understand what the book says this should work. HTH.

I am not familiar with as you say "Ghosting"

I believe he's referring to that he used the Norton Ghost program to clone the drive.

Yes if course "Norton Ghost". I am thinking that somewhere in the procedure "mmdm" missed something. I guess I should have said I wasn't familiar with the program called "Ghosting"
However I wanted to be sure that "mmdm" did follow the directions of the program, that is why I tried to give assistance as to how to do it.
Sometimes it is not easy to follow the directions, in other words it is easy to get something out of order.
I am sure we all have done this or been there. HTH.
If "mmdm" is reading this thread, I would say to start over. Reinstall the original source drive, in the original configuration. Then install the new
destination drive, as a slave, then format the slave, to clean it out.
Then carefully check the procedure for the "Ghost" program for the intended scenario. That being making the destination drive the new "Master" drive. The next step will probably be reconfiguring the "original" drive to be the slave. Of course the eide cable connection and the jumpers will need to be reset and or repositioned to make it all work. The key being the order of events. HTH.

Yes, Lynn, that is what I did. All those steps, in order. Takes forever too, because I have to take the drives back out to be able to reset the jumpers because I can't get to one of them with them in the case. Tried it twice but even though cmos is recognizing the new drive as master in the end, and all the info seems to have transferred, it still will not detect it as C drive and boot from it. Someone suggested that the ghost didn't copy the boot sectors but I don't know why it woulnd't have or how to get it to if it didn't. Just can't figure out the problem. BTW, I'm a she. :)

Here may be some helpful information. Just print it out to do it.
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/8f7dc138830563c888256c2200662ecd/dbb8a85f9f9fe18e882566bb005d3b5c?OpenDocument&prod=Norton%20Ghost&ver=2003%20for%20Windows%202000/NT/Me/98/XP&src=&pcode=ghost&svy=&csm=no
Well that url is a little long. Try this next one.
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/ghost/ghost_2003_tasks.html
Once you get there, find the search the knowledge base box, type in Upgrade Hard Drive. This will get you to the instructions on how to do what you want to do. Next select how to Perform a Disk to Disk clone.
when you get there select How to create a Dos system disk.
Anyway print all this stuff out. I don't know how this compares to the
Manual or the instruction that you were trying to follow. But I hope this gets your Hard drive working the way you want it to. Sometimes I think
that people underestimate this daunting task. If it is so simple then why is the documentation this big? Anyway I am sorry if I referred to you as a male. My name can be both. I am a male. I just retired this year, I was an Electronics Technician that means TV, Audio, and etc. 32 years of it.

I am trying to install a new larger hard drive while keeping the smaller hard drive for backups. I ghosted the existing drive to the new drive and have them properly set with the new larger drive as master and the older drive as slave. All of my data is showing up on the new drive but the new drive is listed as E instead of C and the pc won't boot from the new drive. If I remove the old drive it won't boot at all. What is going wrong that is preventing it from recognizing the new drive as C? It is listed as master in the cmos.

There's a lot of information missing here. What is the capacity of the new drive? Which operating system is being used? Which version? How old is the motherboard? All these factors directly influence this problem.

you might like to try this
reboot the computer using a boot disk that contains either gdisk or fdisk then type the following line for either


fdisk /mbr

or

gdisk 1 /mbr


this fixes the master boot record
you also might try it with the origional drive disconnected

Paul Higgins

I just ghosted a drive and after booting itup, I get an error message about not having access to the hardrive. Any help on this would be appriciated.

i used acronis on a dos hd with a prog
all is well but it is suppose to restart at3 am
and it dose restart but wont load the original prog til i activly restart it works well til 3 am
question how do i finfd the hidden code that perhaps was some kind of protection in the program and disable it
its an oldy but i still use it

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.