Switching drive letters

On my laptop, I have currently (not by design) my operating sytem on drive D:, my applications on drive C:, and my data on drive F:. I want to move the OS to C:, data to D:, and applications to E: They are all on the same disk, just different partitions.

Question: Can I back up my drives with Acronis 7.0 and then restore them in the appropriate drives as above, or will that screw things up?

Yours truly, Earle Fox

 

You will run into problems if you switch your applications drive or your OS drive. You'll need to re-install your apps and OS. I don't think you will be successful in just moving them around. The registry (if WinXP or 2000) keeps this info, so if you go from D: to C: and the registry still points to D:, you'll get a failure.

Do you have a need to maintain three partitions? Do you have your OS and application disks? If so, back up your data only, wipe the drive, remove all partitions, install the OS, install the apps, restore your data.

 

Hello Earle Fox,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We regret to inform you that you cannot move your operational system to another partition letter. Actually you will be able to do that with Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 but the system will not boot. As for other partitions, you may try to change it with Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 and the applications should work.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman

 

Thanks for the info. So I cannot switch drive letters for the OS or Apps.

But that leaves the option of keeping my apps on c: and moving my OS to c: also, which will free d: for my data. Would there be any problem moving just the OS to c: and leaving the apps there? Or would I have to reinstall the apps also?

I want to move the data to d: on my laptop because that is where data is on my desk top, and moving my website from desk top to lap top when I travel creates some anomalies when the drive letters are different.

Yours, Earle Fox

 

Hello Earle Fox,

The only thing you should never do is to change the letter of your operational system partition. You may change the letter of your application partition. Ususally it works fine but even if there will be problems with the functionality you will always be able to change the letter back and restore the functionality.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman