OK, I've decided to merge the two computers together, using the memory and HD of the Celeron to enhance the AMD Athlon XP unit. Background: https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/desktops/amd-athlon-xp-vs-celeron-2-0-a-251988.html

QUESTION: The Celeron computer has a 60g HD, NTFS, Windows XP Pro on it, divided into two partitions: C & D drives. I want to just put this drive into the Celeron computer as D and E drives, and want to know if I'm going to run into any issues on the Athlon when I try to read this drive?

I don't know the ramifications of NTFS file structure and XP Pro operating system, and how that may hinder just using the drive as a data drive in the new system and not lose any of my old data files.

After building the unit and getting it all working, I'm going to strip all of the old Windows system files/folders off the D drive since it won't be needed anymore and will free up even more space on this data drive.

I did this on a similar system with zero problems. Should be smooth transition.

Morrowrj

Do not see any problems in doing any of that, just change the drive to slave or cable seslect. Usually if drive is not seen on as slave, it would be seen with the cable select option - this of course should not matter if drives are SATA drives. NTFS is way to go on any system (except 98). Should be smooth transition with favorable results.

Just copy all data/whatever to new drive and format the old drive as NTFS and leave as D and E or just make it a D drive. And then move data where it workd for your situation.

I'm trying to not format or do anything to the old drive except slave it as D/E drives in the Athlon computer. It has a LOT of data on it... I'd like to just install it, clean off the old OS and program folders and defrag.

Then your all good, should have no problem with detecting as D and E

OK, all went well, but it's WEIRD!

C: = C drive still
D: = CD ROM
E: = New drive
F: = DVD Burner

?? I clicked on E drive and I "think" it is all the data that was on the old computer in 2 separate partitions, now it's all on one partition. How odd is that? Should the partitions still be separate? Is that some aspect of NTFS at work?

I went into Disk Management and tried to reorder the drives:

C: = C drive still
E: = New drive
F: = CD ROM
G: = DVD Burner

I'm trying to rename E back to D but no joy. The CD/DVD drives give me that option to change the drive letter, but the drive E does not.

It does give a weird new option - "CONVERT TO DYNAMIC DISK".

Should I do that? Would I be able to change the drive letter then?

Reassign drive letter of cd rom first - set to something like H and then when you restart computer, the new drive will assign itself to D

so it would like this on reboot after changing drive to H

C: = C drive still
D: = New Drive
F: = DVD Burner
H: = CD rom

Now use the change cd-rom letter to E the same way you changed it to H


You can change the drive letter of a CD-ROM drive by performing the following steps:


1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

2. Double-click the System icon, and then click the Device Manager tab.

3. Click the CD-ROM drive you want to change, and then click the Properties button.

4. Click the Settings tab.

5. In the Reserved Drive Letters section, set Start Drive Letter and End Drive Letter to the drive letter you want the CD-ROM drive to use. Click OK until you return to Control Panel.

6. Restart the computer.



How to change a drive letter
To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps:

1. Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

2. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Performance and Maintenance.

3. Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.

4. Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

5. Click Change.

6. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK.

7. Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.
The drive letter of the drive, the partition, or the volume that you specified is changed, and the new drive letter appears in the appropriate drive, partition, or volume in the Disk Management tool.

A quick word on Dynamic Disc.
Basically it's Mico$oft name for software RAID.
Personally I would never recommend this approach to RAID due mostly to instability compared to a dedicated hardware solution.

Difference Between Basic and Dynamic Disks in Windows XP/2000/2003 (http://www.petri.co.il/difference_between_basic_and_dynamic_disks_in_wind ows_xp_2000_2003.htm)

Seahawk, you're giving steps I've already done. Look at the pic again, and the second set of drive numbers. I already did all that.

But look at the pic. I circled in RED the problem. It doesn't have the change drive letter option like it does for the CD & DVD drives.

Right now these are my drive letters after moving the CD & DVD drives:
C: = C drive still
E: = New drive
F: = CD ROM
G: = DVD Burner

I want the E renamed to D and it won't give me the option.

Here's the pic again:

Don't know how or why it is set up this way but it seems when you added the drive, it put the page file on the new drive and that is why you can't change it as it being used for the page file

Now I do believe you will not have a problem moving page file back to C: from E: and then when drives are set as you would like them, it would be recommended to move page file back to D: (after the change) for better system performance it's recommended to put paging file on another drive if avail.

Move the Paging File in Windows XP
Move the Paging File in Windows XP - Windows tips 'n' tweaks (http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread4614.html)

Once paging file is moved, your pic should change and not have (Page File) next to drive E: and give you other options when you right click on it

The page file is there because I moved it there, I know about the performance trick. Putting the page file back on the C drive had no effect. I'll try again today and reboot a couple of times. Very, very frustrating, the stuff I KNOW is being of no help whatsoever on this quandary.

I definitely feel for you but it should eventually work itself out, somehow

How about if you move page file back and then disconnect cd drives and see if you can change the drive letters with just the hard drives attached and if goes well, when booted back up with cd roms attached, the system would have already possibly assigned d: to the new drive