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Storage forum: Need to switch hard drives

by: pooky4 January 10, 2011 5:53 PM PST

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Need to switch hard drives

by pooky4 - 1/10/11 5:53 PM

I have ordered a new computer from HP (model HP Elite HPE-450t), which I am expecting to arrive in about a week. This computer is configured with a 1.5TB primary hard drive. I added a second 500GB hard drive. I asked, but HP said that they could NOT install Windows on the secondary hard drive. So when I receive the computer, the 1.5TB hard drive will have Windows on it, and the 500GB hard drive will be empty.

I want to reverse this so that the smaller drive will have the OS on it and the larger drive can be used for data storage.

I know I will need to create recovery disks and reinstall everything on the smaller drive. Can someone tell me what I will need to do (if anything) hardware wise to make this work? Most advice I am finding says that I will need to swap the jumpers on the drives for master and slave, but these articles were written in the days of IDE drives.


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Yes you will need to make recovery disks first

by Steven Haninger - 1/11/11 4:54 AM

In Reply to: Need to switch hard drives by pooky4

After that, you may be able to just clone the larger drive to the smaller one using software made to do such. I use Acronis True Image but others are out there. Personally, I would not do this but the choice is yours. I'd be especially careful to keep the recovery partition intact during any cloning process. Sometimes even changes in its size will cause problems if you need to use it for OS recovery. I'd make sure the cloning software doesn't adjust the size of that partition. Good luck.


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