Ask Me Help Desk - Swapping main hd for secondary hd

Quote:

Originally Posted by calikid1959

do i need to try and reinstall that thru system restore or is there another way.

Despite its name, System Restore does not actually restore the entire system in this type of context. System Restore would more aptly be named Windows Repair or Windows Undo. A synopsis of System Restore and what it monitors is available at Wikipedia: System Restore.

I consider the proper way to do what you desire the following:

Back up the data on both drives to other media, optical discs or other hard drives, using Windows built-in backup utility or other software.
Locate and prepare device drivers (device manufacturer's website) for all the hardware in the computer.
Locate the installation discs for all the application software, i.e. Microsoft Office, etc.
Physically swap the two drives, re-jumpering master or slave as necessary for IDE type drives.
Configure the computer's BIOS boot order to floppy, CD, and then hard drive.
Insert original Windows CD and reboot the computer. Note: Since your system is an HP, you may have recovery media instead of a plain vanilla Windows installation CD and the steps below may or may not be required. Recovery media usually installs drivers as well.
Once the CD loads, complete the Windows setup process repartitioning and reformatting the hard drives and installing Windows to the larger hard drive. For OEM systems, the Product Key from the Certificate of Authenticity attached to the case will need to be entered to complete setup. Note: Additional device driver floppy disks may need to be created before this step if the computer contains devices Windows does not include built-in drivers for. A common example of such drivers would be RAID controllers.
Once Windows setup has completed, the computer reboots into Windows.
Once in Windows, device drivers for all the hardware components must be installed. A typical installation in order would consist of the motherboard's chipset driver, any required storage drivers, video drivers, network drivers, audio drivers, and then peripheral drivers (printers, scanners, etc.).
Once all the drivers are loaded, the network adapter may be configured and the Internet accessed. The first stop should be Microsoft's Windows Update site to download and install the hundreds of security patches that have been released since the computer's Windows CD was created. Updates for Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and other products can be obtained as well. Failure to patch will most likely result in the computer getting infected with something in a short amount of time. Windows Update will need to be run multiple times to obtain all available updates.
Next, reinstall, configure, and update all the application software.
Finally, restore any personal data that was backed up in step #1.

Whew, all done. For the average system, this procedure can take a full day or more. For me, that's too bloody long. So...

If the computer is operating properly and has no issues that would be corrected by a bare metal rebuild, here's a faster way:

Obtain drive imaging software (Acronis Trueimage is one example) and another hard drive (external USB connected is handy) larger than both the hard drives combined.
Image both the boot and data drives to the third drive.
Swap the drives.
Restore the boot drive image to the larger drive, deleting and expanding the existing partition(s) up to the full size of the drive (feature of imaging software).
Restore the data image or a portion of it to the smaller drive as desired.

All done. This process may take an hour, two, or three in total depending on the size and speed of the drives. The hands-on time may be a half hour or so with the rest letting the imaging software do its thing.