Ghosted entire HD to another HD

[MichaelD]

Stupid Windows...or stupid me? I KNEW I should've disconnected the old HD before rebooting! :|

I had a HD with four partitions (system/games/storage/backup); Windows on the "system" partition. I installed another HD. I used Ghost to clone the old HD to the new HD. I set the new HD as the boot drive.

Windows took a long time to come up upon first reboot. After Windows not recognizing this and that and 4 reboots, it rebooted with no probs...but it was SLOW. So I check Disc Manager.

The swap file is still on the OLD HD. :| AFAIK, I didn't do anything "wrong."

I want my entire "system", all four partitions, to be on the new HD. Why did Ghost copy everything over, but leave the swap on the old HD? I don't want that.

Should I reclone the old HD to the new HD, but before rebooting, disconnect the OLD HD?

*EDIT 21 DEC*

I think I see what happened. When I originally installed Windows on the old HD, it was partitioned already. Windows put the system files and the swap on C, but the NTDECTECT, NTLDR, etc on D.

Can I just move those from D to C without any ill effects?

 

[Syran]

Should just be able to move your swap file, and be done with it.

 

[Joemonkey]

i thought the swap file being on a separate physical drive was supposed to INCREASE performance?

 

[PowerEngineer]

Originally posted by: Syran
Should just be able to move your swap file, and be done with it.

Yes, it's pretty simple to move your swap file through the Control Panel (System -- advanced tab -- virtual memory change). Just move it from the partition on the old HD to where you want it on the new HD. But as Joe observed, it seems strange that this would noticeably slow your system down.

I can't think why it didn't move the swap file unless it wasn't in the C: partition on the old HD.

How sure are you that you're actually running on the system partition on the new drive?

Good luck

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks for the replies. I wiped the new HD clean and I will start over.

I'm sure I was running on the new drive as that's what I booted from and what Windows was showing in disk management.

Originally (awhile back), I installed a fresh copy of Windows onto the HD and it had existing partitions on it already.

Windows being stupid like it is made my C drive "boot" and my D drive "system."

The odd thing is that there are Windows files on the D drive (NTLDR, NTDETECT, etc) I know these are important! the D drive is where I keep all my games. Everything else, including the swap file is on C.

Can i fix that somehow? Can I just move those files to C? Probably not...

 

[MichaelD]

Bump. Please see edited OP.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Michael, it sounds the D: partition might be the primary partition on your existing hard drive. According to this article here, those files you are naming do need to reside in the primary partition. It seems that your C: drive must be a logical partition. If this is correct, then you can NOT just move those files to your C: drive.

Here's what I would try -- not at all sure it will work. Reinstall the new drive; copy the C: partition from the old drive into the primary partition on the new drive; copy the D: partition from the old drive into one of the logical partition on the new drive; copy those system files from the D: partition into the primary partition on the new drive. Turn it off, remove the old drive, and see if it will boot on the new drive.

Maybe others have better ideas...

Good luck!

 

[MichaelD]

Thanks for the suggestion, PowerEngineer. I tried it, but it didn't work. Then I tried something else and screwed it up completely. 😀

Good thing I made backups of all the important stuff. I'm now posting from a squeaky clean new install.

I deleted ALL the partitions on ALL the drives, just made one new C partition and installed on that. After Windows was up and running, I repartitioned everything and now it's all as it should be.

Chalk this one up to "Lesson Learned." Thanks, PE and everyone. Happy Holidays. 🙂