Designating new drive as (C) boot drive

Frank wrote:
Hi!
I installed and partitioned a second hard drive (F). I want to use
it as my C (boot) drive. (D,E are CD-ROMS)
How do I do this? I am using Windows 2000. I used back-up/restore
to copy all system files and settings (everything on my current C
drive) over to the new one. Simply changing the jumpers on the
drives (master, slave) does not work. I'm not proficient in DOS
commands (i.e. Recovery Console), is there a simpler way? Thanks.

Unnecessary crosspostings snipped.

To begin with, I assume you are talking about 2000's native back up utility?
This *CANNOT* be used to image a drive - it does exactly what it says on the
tin, as it were, backs-up files for later retrieval - within Windows. The
reason you cannot boot from it is because a) you haven't cloned the drive at
all and b) the partition isn't active. In order for a drive/partition to be
bootable, it must first be made active and, because you had it set to slave,
the partitions on it are logical. A drive must have at least one active
partition to be designated bootable.

You don't say what make your drive is, but I'll assist you anyway. Some HD
manufacturers offer a free download that will copy settings from an old
drive to a new. If yours doesn't, then you will need to get hold of a
3rd-party imaging tool (I recommend Drive Image 7 - Symantec's Ghost has
never worked for me). With this you can copy your old drive exactly to the
new - I've been using it for years. I've just restored a 60GB partition with
no trouble at all. You cannot use the recovery console to copy a drive.

Do you have some form of removable storage to back up to? This would be the
best - and easiest way - of doing it so, if things do go pear-shaped, you
still have your precious data. And, before you start worrying, how you'll
manage to fit, for example, a 30GB image onto CDs, the compression ratio is
excellent - 6:1 at standard compression (I've never tried higher than that)
which means you'll only require 8 700MB discs.

I would strongly recommend the purchase of both Drive Image 7 /and/
Partition Magic 8 - they are invaluable to me now.

If you require any further information, please post back. If you choose to
purchase DI (and I cannot recommend it strongly enough!) then it really is
idiotproof. Install, activate, and follow the wizard. The backing up of my
60GB partition took around 30 minutes - and restoration the same - so you've
saved yourself, what, around 11 hours at least - if not longer!

Restoration must be done from a special console, accessed by booting from
the DI CD. When restoring the image, make sure you select to 'make partition
active for booting OS' otherwise you'll be wasting your time as the
partition won't be bootable.

Hope that helps a bit.