migration of the system partition

Hello!

I want to migrate the boot system partition from hard drive 1 to hard drive 2 because the capacity of the existing system partition is too small. I'm using Acronis®*True*Image*Home® Version 10.0.
Here is the exact description:
Dell PC with the OS Win XP Home.
Hard drive 1 with the following partitions:
- partition (no name), primary, FAT 16, with a Dell Utility
- partition C:, booting system partition, primary, NTFS
- partition F: until J:, logical, NTFS
- partition U:, primary, NTFS

Hard drive 2 with the following partitions:
- partition O:, primary, NTFS
- partition P:, primary, NTFS
- partition Q:, primary, NTFS

After the migration I want to use both hard drives, too. But the system partition (boot) should be on the hard drive 2.
What are the necessary steps so that I can migrate the system partition in a secure manner? What should I do with the no name partition on hard drive 1 (Dell Utility)?
Thank you for your assistance!

Klaus

 

You didn't post an drive or partition sizes.

You should be able to do a full disk backup of your C drive, but it should be done to a drive that you will not be booting from and not to the same drive you are going to backup.

I know there is also a Clone utility with Acronis, but I have never used it
and there have been posts in this forum from people who have used it and ran into problems.

I would get an empty external drive and backup your C drive to the External.
Then I would use the Rescue CD to restore the backup image to drive 2, first partition.

 

What you are proposing to do is fraught with problems and unless these are properly addressed you will fetch up with an un-bootable computer.

At the very least you will have to edit the Boot configuration settings ( boot INI) so that the bios will be pointed to the new configuration. It will be necessary to delete the existing OS before the first boot into the new configuration.

Are you really sure that you have come up with the best layout for your computer? One possibility which would be easy to do is to replace the first hard drive with a larger one so you could allocate more space to the C drive.
An alternative would be to take some space from the existing partitions on drive 0 and add it to to the C drive.

You could also consider this approach which would be to delete the existing OS on C drive but leave behind the the NTLDR,NTDETECT and Boot INI files. Then C could be reduced to a few MB and the boot INI edited to point to disk 1 partition 0. Edit Disk 1 Partition 1.
In any event have a good look at the existing Boot INI to understand how things are currently configured and what would be the implications if you were to remove the Dell FAT 16 utilities.

Xpilot

 

Here's the description including the sizes of the partitions:
Dell PC with the OS Win XP Home.
Hard drive 1 with the following partitions:
- partition (no name), primary, FAT 16, with a Dell Utility, 39MB
- partition C:, booting system partition, primary, NTFS, 19,5 GB
- partition F: until J:, logical, NTFS, 19,5 GB ... 1 GB
- partition U:, primary, NTFS, 23 GB

Hard drive 2 with the following partitions:
- partition O:, primary, NTFS, 180 GB
- partition P:, primary, NTFS, 4,9 GB
- partition Q:, primary, NTFS, 47 GB (virtual Linux)

Step 1: I will divide partition O: into 3 pieces (Paragon Partition Manager):
partition (no name), 39MB,
partition R:, primary, 50 GB,
partition O:, logical, 130 GB
Step 2: backup of partition C: and partition (no name) hd 1 to an external drive.
Step 3: restore to partition R: and partition (no name) hd 2

What are the next steps? rename partitions and MBR problems?

 

Here's my boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
signature(52770010)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /noguiboot /nodebug

-------
I installed a lot of programs in F: and G: I don't want to replace hard drive 1 because of many reinstallations. Another possibility is: pushing free space through F: and G: (Partition Manager). Years ago I've chosen that way, but I wasn't 100% satisfied with the result.

 

The programs on F and G, you can just move them to a data partition. In most cases they will work even if moved to another partition, all the necessary registry entries will remain in c: partition. I move my game folders to different partitions and they always work. If they don't work, just change the drive letters on the data partitions.

The only problem I see is possible drive letter problems (xp doesn't like being moved to different partitions that it recognizes).

But since you have "paragon partition manager" , that bootcd has a "boot corrector". A "boot corrector" will easily fix any problems you encounter with drive letters or if you have to edit the boot.ini file.

I would not attempt to bootup a computer with 2 identical c: drives. Worst case scenario it can cause a failure to boot on both drives.

 

If your intention is to make hard drive 2 look like hard drive 1, then I think
you need a third hard drive to make backups of each partition on hard drive 1,
disconnect hard drive 1, boot from rescue cd, restore all 3 partitions to hard drive 2.

You can get a 1tb hard drive for 70 dollars.

Do not reconnect hard drive 1 and boot from hard drive 2.

 

If you were to replace the first hard drive with a larger one you would not have to re-install anything.

A full image of the complete drive restored to the replacement drive is all that is required. This is true even though you have taken the unusual step of installing software on different partitions of the same hard drive.

Once a full image has been made and stored in free space on the second drive or on an external drive the original drive can be removed and replaced by the new one.
Then boot with the TI recovery CD and run the restore. As you have a partitioning tool you could sort out the partition sizes after a straight "as is" restore or if you prefer you can re-size as part of the restore process.

Installing a new disk this way puts none of your systems or data to any risk at all.

BTW it appears that you have a second installation of XP in partition 0 of your second hard drive. There is also a virtual Linux install.
If you choose the easy option of upgrading the first hard drive neither of these OSs would be affected.

Xpilot