Hard Drive formatting / boot help

[OgreMkV]

Hi guys, Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Current setup:
Disk 1 is the D drive (150Gig) and has Win XP on it. This is also labeled as Active and Boot by Partition Wizard. This drive is about 5 years old.

Disk 2 is the C: drive (75 gig) and has Win7 on it. This is labeled as a 'system' drive by Partition Wizard. This drive is almost 10 years old.

Disk 3 is an external 500g HDD.

I cannot format any drive currently in the PC. D is about 50% with really old files and Windows System stuff. C is over 75% full with Win7 and libraries.

What I want to do is either

A) Format the D drive so that I can use it for libraries.
B) Move everything to the D drive so I can use the larger volume for everything (preferred as that would make it easier to copy everything to a large HDD that I plan on purchasing soon)
C) Remove the D drive and install a larger HDD, then copy everything to it.

I do have the Win7 upgrade disk, but I'm pretty sure I did completely clean install (or I thought I did). I do not know if I can find the Win XP disks... I've moved twice since then.

Any help... much appreciated.

 

[SIW2]

1. Use partition Wizard to mark C drive Active. ( In PW main window, rt click C , select Modify, select Set Active, ok, Apply )

2. Mark D drive Inactive. ( In PW main window, rt click D , select Modify, select Set Inctive, ok, Apply )

3. Boot the 7 dvd and run startup repair 3 times.

You will then be able to boot back into 7.

4. Use Partition wizard to copy the C drive to the the D drive.

5. When that is done, make sure you now mark D Active again and C inactive.

I don't recall if PW updates bcd during Copy - if not, run startup repair from the dvd again ( just once should do it )

 

[OgreMkV]

Thanks for the process... I'll try it shortly.

1) Why run repair 3 times (not that it matters, I'm just curious)

2) After this process, can I merge the partitions that are now on D?

3) After this process, can I safely delete the Windows and other files that are on D?

Thanks
Kevin

 

[OgreMkV]

OK problem. Partition wizard won't let me set C as active.

 

[SIW2]

Is it a Logical Drive?

If it is, you need to convert it to Primary before you can mark it active.- PW can do that.

I would get the free PW boot disc as well - it's very handy.

You want to create all the files needed for 7 boot process. Starup repair doesn't do it all in one pass.

When you boot back into 7 look in Disk management - your 7 partition should say Active, System.

Then delete the D partition. Then Copy C to D.

 

[OgreMkV]

OK. Well bad news good news. I fracked up my drives. SO, I checked around and Office Depot has 1 terabyte Seagates for less than $70.

So, I got that. created a Win7 boot disk with the Seagate software on it. Booted from that, cloned my normal boot drive to the 1TB, then ran Win7 boot disk to fix a few issues and bang... good to go.

Thanks for the help!!!