This is easily fixed - I do it often.

Make sure the old drive is running as a slave, and preferably is on another
IDE port, so that it won't slow down the new one. (Actually, it won't even
matter if it's a master as long as it's on the other port, once you've done
the following).

When Windows has booted up from the new drive and settled down, go into the
old drive and rename the Windows folder 'Swindows' (or something similar).

Create a new folder in the old C drive named 'dumped'.  Make sure you can
see all files (no hidden files).  Now round up all the loose files in the C
drive (not folders) and move them into 'dumped'.  The important ones to move
are msdos.sys, io.sys plus config.sys and autoexec.bat if they're there, but
I shift the lot to save confusion.

Now, your old C drive only has folders in it and no loose files.  Last, go
into 'dumped' and rename msdos.sys and io.sys to msdos.old and io.old. You
may have to change the attributes of these files to allow you to rename
them.

If you ever want to revive your old C drive you only have to reverse this
process and you're back in business.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

----- Original Message
Subject: [PCBUILD] Making old drive not bootable


> Hi
> This is my first message.
>
> I recently installed a new hard drive and cloned the old one using
> Ghost.
> It did not go smoothly at all, but that is another story if anyone wants
> it.
>
> my OS is WIN2K SP2
>
> The clone job is now done and the new drive seems to be running fine and
> is in fact a clone of the orignal.
>
> Ghost warns strongly (and so did pay support) against booting with both
> old and new bootable drives connected.
>
> They claim this can damage one or both drives due to a race condition.
>
> So the question is ...
>
> How do i make the old drive NOT bootable without destroying the contents
> and/or reformatting it?
>
> I want to use it as a second drive and it would be great if i could also
> restore bootablility.

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