Admin

A number of contributors have posted regarding limited-capacity main drives, (i.e. ones containing the operating system but with less than about 40 GB), and cannot upgrade, but do not want simply to replace the drive with a larger one with all the problems of having to reinstall the operating system and all the programs they have already installed. One answer is to purchase a second larger drive (they are cheap now) and clone the original drive to the new drive and make that the main drive, or if users already have a larger D:\ drive, clone the operating system drive to the existing D:\ drive and reconfigure it as drive C:\.

One solution is as follows:

1. If you already have a larger D:\ drive in use, back up all important information on drive D:\ to DVDs, CDs, floppies or, if you have the space, drive C:\. If installing a new drive, set the jumper to "slave" (see step 7 below) and format it using the NTFS file system using Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools/ Computer Management/ Disc Management.

2. Download XXClone from http://www.xxclone.com/and unzip to a folder of your choice.

3. Run xcfwinst_0520.exe from the folder you unzipped to.

4. Run XXClone from Start/All programs/XXClone

5. Make sure the source and target volumes are your C:\ and D:\ drives respectively. Tick the box for make the target volume bootable. (see screenshot below) Press Start.



6. When finished, switch off your machine and remove both drives.

7. Check the jumper between the power socket and IDE cable socket. There should be three sets of two pins with a jumper across two of the pins. The pins should be named as "master", "slave" or "cable select". The labeling is often on the PCB (printed circuit board) or a label rather, than by the pins so you'll have to look around for it. If not refer to your manual. Change the jumpers so that the "slave" becomes the "master" and the "master" becomes the "slave". If they are both set to "cable select", set the jumper for your old D:\ drive to "master" and your old C:\ drive to "slave".

8. Replace the drives the opposite way to what they were. I.e. put your old D:\ where your old C:\ drive was. The actual order isn't important, but makes connecting the cable easier.

9. Connect your power cables (yellow lead to the outside) and your IDE cable.
If each drive had it's own cable it doesn't matter which, but usually one cable supports your hard drives and the other supports your optical (DVD or CD) drives). If only one cable supplies both hard drives it will have two plugs, one at the end and one a bit further up the cable. Plug the one at the end into your new D:\ drive and the other into your C:\ drive.

10. Cross your fingers and switch on your machine. It should now boot to your new C:\ drive. You can then copy all your saved files back from the new D:\ drive and/or DVDs etc.

11. Reformat your D:\ drive to get rid of all operating system files.

---