- Replacing Hard Drive - hard drive letter
- Posted by operaflute on November 23rd, 2007
Okay, I am in the midst of swapping out the HDD on my Dell laptop (Inspiron
8600) with a bigger one. I've put the new HDD in a USB enclosure and I'm
using the "copy drive" feature on Norton Ghost to copy the old HDD data to
the new. How do I maintain the "C" as the drive name. I can't name the new
HDD "C" since "C" is used by the current HDD, but I can't rename the current
HDD since it's the boot drive.
What's the best thing to do?
Thanks!
- Posted by Patrick Keenan on November 23rd, 2007
"operaflute" <operaflute@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:800307F8-0EB6-4B58-931E-EE687178C610@microsoft.com...
Ghost should look after this for you.
You're cloning the drive and do not name it.
When done, remove the old drive and put the new one in, do not restart with
the old drive connected.
HTH
-pk
- Posted by operaflute on November 23rd, 2007
I can't see how to edit posts...
Anyway - I wanted to add - should I just NOT assign a drive letter to the
new HHD (currently USB) I am copying to, and when I physically swap them out,
it will automatically call it "C"?
"operaflute" wrote:
- Posted by Alias on November 23rd, 2007
operaflute wrote:
That's because you can't edit them.
Yes.
Alias
- Posted by Patrick Keenan on November 23rd, 2007
"operaflute" <operaflute@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:51453F77-83CD-4A4B-B488-B8C08AE36752@microsoft.com...
That's the way it should work. Cloning software often starts with wiping
the partition table of the target anyway, so you're wasting effort by
assigning a letter.
HTH
-pk
- Posted by operaflute on November 23rd, 2007
I've never been able to find support for Ghost, really. The website is
basically the instruction book online. And I've not found a forum at all.
Gulp - I guess I'll try just not assigning a drive letter...
Thanks
"Patrick Keenan" wrote:
- Posted by Timothy Daniels on November 23rd, 2007
"operaflute" wrote:
You're making a clone of the original (which called its own partition "C:").
So the clone will also call its own partition "C:" when it is running.
*TimDaniels*
- Posted by operaflute on November 23rd, 2007
Do I need to remove the DVD/CD? Is there any chance it will call that "C"
and the HDD "D". I've been reading about all these problems where the new
HDD gets locked into the wrong letter, and you can't log on..
Gah! I'm skeered to do this!
Thanks to all.
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
- Posted by operaflute on November 23rd, 2007
Incidentally, I already copied the "Dell Utility" drive to the new HDD. It
doesn't show up in Disk Manager which seems odd. Why is that? There is no
drive letter associated with it on either the old or new HDDs, but the
partition on the old HDD DOES show up in Disk Manager.
"operaflute" wrote:
- Posted by operaflute on November 24th, 2007
Can you believe it? It all worked as it was supposed to!
Now, let's say in the future, I want to use the old HDD as an external. I
won't cause any trouble by hooking it up, will I?
Many thanks for all!
- Posted by Timothy Daniels on November 24th, 2007
"operaflute" wrote:
No, as long as the old HDD is used via USB because a USB
HDD can't be given control for booting by the BIOS (for most if
not all BIOSes).
*TimDaniels*