Moving XP from master to slave HD

[Marunad]

Howdy, been awhile since I've been here.

My system basics are: AMD Athlon 1800+, running XP Home, two HD's,
one a 14.31 gb master, the other a 55.90 gb slave.

I'm running out of room on the master. I recently tried the latest MS
Service Pack 2 d/l that failed to install properly. During this process
approximately 600 mb's on the master of space has "disappeared" or
gone into use and I've been unable to identify what's using the space.
I now have approximately 750mb's free on the master after moving files and folders that, at my basic knowledge level, I knew wouldn't cause operating
heartburn and then ran Norton speed disk.

Question: Is there an easy way for a relatively incompetent keyboard jockey to move my XP Home OS from the present master to the present slave and then swap status of the drives making the old slave the master and vica versa? Or, is my easiest alternative to backup the master and slave, do a reformat of the slave, then a reinstall of the XP Home OS onto the former slave drive and jump through the Microsoft hoops on the telephone regarding the registration change? Thanks.

[EvilRick]

Here's what I would do . . .

1. Backup your stuff, just because you should.
2. Use your 55.9GB 'slave' drive as your storage drive and copy all your stuff to it. Sort it and make it look neat.
3. Format the 14.3GB 'master' drive and use it just for your WINDOWS install. I don't know what other software you run, but that 14.3GB should be more than enough to run WINDOWS and some applications. If you're into gaming, you may need to consider installing your games to your 55GB drive.
4. Rejoice in the fact that you have a clean install and have separated your OS and DATA so that if you ever have to reinstall again, you'll know your DATA is safe on another drive.
5. And I forgot to mention, get rid of that Norton crap.

[Marunad]

LOL@ the Norton, indeed. Thanks! It just felt too easy, that I was missing something that would bite me in the arse.