Fixing System/Active Drive Issue

[steve1967]

I just built my new PC which has two WD hard drives - a 500 Gb Green SATA 3Gb/s and a 1 Tb Black SATA, 6Gb/s. The smaller one is to serve as a backup drive.

When I try to select the backup drive in Win7's backup it doesn't show up, which I found out was because it was an active drive. If I make it not active, it shows up but can't be selected because it is also a system drive (and my system won't boot). Come to find out, when Win7 installed, it didn't make the 1Tb drive a system drive.

So my system files are on the backup drive and not the boot drive.

Is there a way to:
1) remove the system files from the backup drive and
2) put system files on the boot drive

without reformatting either drive?

 

[steve1967]

Oh, and I know about the network workaround for Backup - I am looking to make my system robust by not having to have both hard drives work in the event of failure. Thanks!

 

[Deadstick50]

WD offers a drive cloning tool you can get on their website, you could try that to copy over the OS and then wipe the storage drive.

BTW W7 assumed the first drive it found was to be the OS drive, I ALWAYS install the OS with only the intended drive hooked up, then go back in and add the storage drive.

 

[steve1967]

Thanks Deadstick50 - I'll check that out. I had that backup drive formatted since I used it to move over all my data from my old computer, so that is probably why it found that drive first.

It really seems as if there should be a way to make a system files on an existing drive without reformatting. Grr....

Hmm, I wonder what would happen if I removed the backup drive and failed to boot - would the Win7 install disk be able to "repair" it without reformatting?

 

[Deadstick50]

steve......that sounds like a working idea, but i have never tried it, really depends on whether the install disk will offer you that option???
BTW, good luck with it and please keep me updated!