cloning and drive letter

i've looked at many posts on this subject and i'm a bit confused. i'm replacing an old drive (currently C) that's connected to the ide controller on my motherboard with a new one (currently K) that's connected via a pci card. i've cloned c to k. if i simply disconnect c and reboot, will k now be seen as c without actually reassigning the letter (k to c)? if not, i understand that the Ultimate Boot CD has a facility (Saving Partiton) that will rename drives. but this is also a registry editor. since my clone of c still has pointers referring to c and not k, i'm wondering if i'll run into problems if i try using saving partition-there's no need to change anything in the registry, right? it would be nice to use my DD10 boot cd to change drive names, but i can only get it to load the safe mode version. i'm waiting on Acronis to get back to me. in the meantime I thought i'd try the ubcd if that's feasible. any suggestions/ideas?

 

If your bios supports booting from any available drive, the system should boot from that "K" position if you disconnect the original C. And windows should assign the letter C to the booting drive.
As for items on the old K (now C) which referred to the old C, I'm not sure what would happen.

 

i know my bios works in this order: a, c, d(cd). past that, i have no idea. furthermore, my Compaq computer is several years old and the bios setup is pretty primitive-i can't specify a boot priority. my bios looks nothing like the help screens at the hp website and their tech support couldn't even tell me how to set boot priority!

 

shakespeare,

You need to remove the old HD, put the new HD on the IDE controller and boot. Your WinXP will be C: drive. Now you can shutdown and connect the old HD as a second HD.

 

been told that's not possible. something about a limitation of 137 mb. that's why i had to get a pci card-going from 14 to 330 gb. i'm wondering what will happen if i disconnect my 14 gb drive and reboot.

 

OK. Leave your new HD on the PCI card but jumper it as Master. Remove the old HD and boot up. You can't do any damage to your old HD. Don't reintroduce the old HD until the new HD is working properly.

Let us know what happens.

 

i should have mentioned the my new drive is a sata drive. where can i find instructions on how to jumper it as master? is this a controller card or motherboard issue? sorry, i'm not very facile with the insides of computers--just enough to be dangerous!

 

If it's SATA nothing needs to be done. There is no Master/ Slave situation but let's discuss it further before you reintroduce the IDE drive. The SATA HD should boot.

 

i'm retiring the old drive so reitroducing it is not an issue. looks like i'm good to go.

 

I'll wait to hear what happens.

 

i'll report back shortly

 

looks like that was a success. i'll need to do some more testing, but everything seems to be running fine. thanks for your help.

 

Excellent. If it was my IDE HD, I'd use it as a "slave" to store backup images.

 

i have the luxury of a big ide drive that's attached to my usb port that i use as a backup. thanks again for your help.

 

Excellent again. Happy backups.