I just installed a second hard drive and did a clean format with Win2K and set the hard drive as master. Can I go to the old drive, which is now set as slave and delete the unused? windows directories and files?

TIA,
Robin

if you are now running Win2k from the new drive, and have no use for the old one, and no important files on the drive, then by all means, format it and partition it so you can use it as you see fit. No reason to keep that stuff on there without a purpose for it.

Yeah, this had occurred to me too. The thing is, I want to run some of the programs from the old disk. I don't know if I've got all the setups anymore or not to move them to the new disk. The old disk is also giving me warnings in the system event viewer that it is dangerously low on space. I was hoping to just delete all that windows stuff to provide the overhead I need.

Thanks again,
Robin

Thanks. There don't seem to be any good answers, though. Maybe I'll take up magic.

Robin

Pulling rabbits out of your hat isnt going to help....:grinthumb

You can do a bit of magic alright.
Make your old W2k-drive the master again, and your new one the slave.
Then boot into your old W2K (which presumably was originally the C-drive), copy all the directories of a particular program over to the exact same location on your new disk (where again presumably W2K is on the C-drive).
Anyway, the drive-letter of the old programs must match the drive-letter of the new W2K-installation.
If you know which files from the e.g. Windows\system32 dir belong to this program, copy them also to the corresponding dir on your new HD.
You may find other relevant info in the uninstall-file of that program (if it exists).
Also copy the relevant data from Documents and Settings\ {username} \Start Menu to your new HD.

Then, if you are a bit of a registry-guru, export all the registry-data that you can find of that particular program, and put it all together in a temporary directory of your new HD.

Now reverse the HD's again so that you can start again in your new W2K.
Make a full backup of your registry, then import the program reg-entries from your old program (which you saved, see above).

Finally, try the new program to see if it runs. If it misses any files, it will tell you. Just copy them over from your old HD.

I realize this is the long way around, but if you dont have the original disks anymore, it may be your best shot.

There used to be a program-copy-utility that came with earlier versions of Drive-Image, but I can't remember the name (Drive-Copy?)

doesnt norton have a utility for this?

The program's name was "MagicMover" and came with DriveImage V2.0

Norton has a utility for this, but it's not Ghost. Norton SystemWorks has an Uninstall Wizard and a Restore Backup Wizard. Here's what I've been doing: Choosing an exe on my old hard drive and uninstalling it. Then restoring it to the new hard drive. Finally, I go to the directory on the old hard drive and cut and paste any files that weren't backed up. This seems to be getting registry entries and everything.

I looked into MagicMover and couldn't find it. I also thought about using Ghost, but if recollection serves, Ghost likes to restore things to the exact same place on the new hard drive as the old hard drive. (Please correct me on this.)

Fortunately, my habit of saving installation files was better than I recalled, so I'm not having to use this lengthy process as much as I thought I would at first. Hopefully this will keep me from having to take my machine apart, though.

That is so neat. I had no idea you could do that. This poses an interesting question. Could you possibly copy the appropriate files to a disk and then place them on another machine in the appropriate places?

RJ1, glad you could solve it your way.

raebabe, any answer to this would border on condoning piracy

I just want to tell you all how much I appreciate your help. I've never seen a forum that was so helpful without it having a bunch of flamers or the like.
Robin

I'm not sure how much this will help but it looks like you can also use the xcopy DOS command to move your programs. That way all you would have to do is add the secondary HD, do the DOS command and name the location of where you would like the file to go rather than having to copy it manually.

I've never tried this though. I came across it while I was looking for more information on another DOS command and thought you might find it usefull.

Here is a link with more information:

http://www.computerhope.com/xcopyhlp.htm

Thanks, raebabe. xcopy will definitely help. It looks like I'll be using the /s/k options to copy directories and all but empty subdirectories and copy attributes respectively. Does anybody know whether the /s option will destroy existing target directories?
Robin

I just read about the ultimate xcopy, which is..., wait for it... XXcopy

http://www.xxcopy.com/

I can see where this is going...

Actually, I just downloaded it. When I get back from my Thanksgiving trip, I'll give it a go.

Thanks again,
Robin