How do I make my SATA drive the primary drive

[Guest]

I have suscessfully cloned my 149Gb ide system drive to a new 500Gb sata drive .
I intend to use the new SATA as my system drive, and the old IDE for backup.
I have configured the SATA as my first boot drive.

However, when I boot up to windows I realise it is still booting up from the old IDE drive. In the boot priority section of BIOS though, I didn't even mention the bloody IDE drive.
How do i get SATA disk recognised as c: drive.

Thanks 4 any help.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi there,

Just to make sure, what utility or product did you use to Clone your older HDD to your new HDD? That you cloned the whole HDD, not Imaged a partition. (which OS are you using? Win XP, Vista, Win-7)

If so, just shut down, disconnect the old HDD SATA cable from the MB, and connect the new SATA cable in the same port like SATA_0, just for simplicity.

Then POST up to the Splash screen and click <Del> or your MB's hot key, to take you to the System Setup BIOS screen. It should see your new HDD as Disk 0, make sure it is 1st in the Boot Order, and either Auto, or Enabled. Should be the same as the way the old HDD was set.

When set properly, click Save and Exit and it will reboot up to Windows normally. then go to Disk Management, in the lower graphics section to make sure the OS is seeing the Volume and is designated as C:\

When all is working OK after a day or so, you can reconnect the "old" system HDD to a later SATA_1 or 2 or whatever port. Set the SATA port as "Enabled" in the BIOS. Then in Windows Disk Management, you can Format the "old" drive (now DISK 1) with NTFS, which will delete all your data on it and it can then be used as a regular data drive.

 

[MRFS]

John, The first HDD is IDE/PATA, not SATA (see above).


judeal, Western Digital has a free version of Acronis
that we have used to clone the C: system partition:

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

But, at least one of the connected HDDs must be a WD HDD.


It sounds to me as if your system is seeing the OS files
on the old IDE/PATA HDD, and gets confused somehow.


BEST WAY is to run do the clone, and then remove the IDE/PATA
HDD temporarily e.g. by disconnecting the parallel ribbon cable.

If you can't boot from the new SATA HDD, then your clone task
is the culprit.

Once you are sure you can boot from the cloned C: partition
on your new SATA HDD, you could install your IDE HDD in an
external enclosure that connects to a USB port.

Radio Shack sells this external IDE enclosure with reliable
USB interface:

http://www.radioshack.com/pwr/product-reviews/Computers/Drives-storage/Drive-enclosures/Gigaware/p/3443580-Gigaware-3-5-IDE-Hard-Drive-Enclosure.html


USB ports typically act in the same way as "hot swapped" HDDs:
this will make it possible to re-format your PATA HDD
because none of the files on the old C: partition will be
"in use" by the OS.

Then, you can re-connect that IDE/PATA HDD to the main
IDE connector on your motherboard, if you still want it
back inside your chassis.


IDE/PATA controllers are just not "hot swapped" unfortunately,
hence the sequence recommended above.


MRFS

 

[Guest]

Thanks MRFS and John too, Your suggestions worked, though partly. All I did was unplug the ide drive and the sata drive booted up without any problem. Obviously the system was confused @ first. However, I don't know why it should. After all I informed it by setting the sata to disk 0, and also as 1st boot drive, why would in an ide slave up set it, Though it has a system image as well it was only a slave,

Well the point is I wish to maintain a copy of my system and possibly synchronize it as often, so that I don't have to reinstall anything if something goes wrong with the work bench. Any ideas?

my system: custom built
os : vista 32
cloning application: EASEUS to-do-backup

 

[John_VanKirk]

I Judeal,

Good to hear you new system SATA HDD is working fine.

It is great you are going to back up your system should the primary HDD crash. Everyone needs to, but as you can see on the forum, many folks don't, and then have trouble

There are several different methods to make a copy of your OS and data, that can sometimes be confusing.

A clone is making a bit by bit copy of a HDD, all partitions, the whole drive, as you just did to upgrade your primary HDD. The cloned drive has to be the same size or larger than the original since there has to be the same space to fit all the bits. That wouldn't work here since your "old" drive is much smaller.

An Image, like done with Acronis True Image or Ghost, is a compressed copy of a complete partition, that can be copied back exactliy like the original. Takes less space, can be put on smaller HDD's.

A BackUp is copying data from files to a complete partition to another HDD for storage. Restoring it back to the original HDD does not place the bits in the same place. It can be done as a "complete" copy, a "differential copy" or an "incremental copy. A lot to keep straight.

From your description, an Image would be the way to go. You can place several Images on the same secondary or external HDD if space allows. EASEUS states it is a cloning utility, but it also says it will copy Partitions, so it might be used to make an Image as described above. Have not used it to confirm that with 100% certainty.

 

[Guest]

John,
Sorry if I wasn't clear on the idea I requested. Now that my cloned system drive is firing well and the former system drive still off the plug, how do I make the system understand that the ide is no longer the master, but a slave at this moment, if I plug it back on. Do you think compressing the disk image would do the trick ?