Consequent to lots of shuffling around of drives - crashes, disks fatalities, etc, I want to move my XP sp3 os to a seprate drive in the same machine - apart from the fact that the present os is located on a 5 year old drive, I want to be able to set up a dual boot - XP and Ubuntu. To do this I need to use a commom hard drive (so it seems) and there is not enough room on the old drive.

Obvious is to reformat, etc, but..the pain of putting everything back...

Hope there is someone out there with a clever solution that a simple person like myself can follow

mistral7

To move the Windows installation you need cloning software. I am sure if you Google for 'free disc imaging software' or something similar you will find plenty of options.
You can install Ubuntu onto a second hard drive and still have it dual boot. If you want the two operating systems on the same disc Ubuntu comes with disc partitioning software so you can allocate whatever proportions you need.
A very useful guide to Ubuntu can be found at Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference

You do not have to set up everything on a single drive unless the machine that you are using is a laptop or so old itself that the hardware is disfunctional.

But we can lead you through what ever you decide....keep in mind that transfering the old XP over will also transfer all your issues as well. The only option for that is a clean installation...( for restoration issues look into imaging the drive and this will save you having to keep reinstalling all the apps as well!)

let us know what you really wish to do and we will be glad to walk you through the process.

"Obvious is to reformat, etc, but..the pain of putting everything back."

After you set up xp on the new drive you could use the file and settings transfer wizzard to put everything back.
I haven't used it yet I was just reading about it yesterday and I was thinking of using it myself
Of course that implies that the files and settings do not have any issues otherwise you will transfer them to your new hard drive

The file and settings transfer wizard does not move applications or programs...this also means that any encrypted files will not open properly if moved from one computer to the next while encrypted.

Hi Dr Hugh. Thank you for your assistance. I will check out your info - I really don't know anything about mirroring a drive. I have used knoppix to rescue data and partition drives, and also ubuntu before I discovered I had not achieved "dual boot" Guess there is a bit to learn...

Lurkswithin, many thanks for your help, also. Can we explore this a little further, please.
If I "image" the drive with the OS on, would this insulate me against a fatal crash with the consequence of rebuilding the whole XP system again? If so, I am happy to leave the OS where it is and set up the ubuntu to boot from a separate drive. It is currently sitting on the new drive (200Gb partition) but I had to disable the grub (boot) to get back to XP.
Given all of that, how do I: 1. mirror the drive, and 2. How do I set up the ubuntu and the XP (on seperate drives) as dual boot. ??

And, thank you to Status1 for your response.

An image is an exact copy of the hard drive state. So when you restore from an image it will bring your system exactly back to the state it was in at the time of making the image. Including OS, programs, software, documents and any bad parts too as it is an exact copy of that point in time.

I don't have any recommendations of a free imaging software, maybe someone else could post one. Here are a couple I know of.
DriveImage XML Backup Software
Drive Snapshot - Disk Image Backup
Complete hard disk recovery solution, backup, drive copy, clone and image computer software

Thank you Squirrelnmoose. I have used driveimageXML to generate a copy of my windows OS drive.

I would like some assistance with the dual Boot requirement and I wonder if lurkswithin or anyone else can help me, please.
ituation: Windows is located on drive K. I want to locate ubuntu on a partition in another drive (say G). Actually, I did instal ubuntu onto that (G) drive but found the dual boot menu did not come up - all I could do was open windows. I then tried using supergrub, got a dual boot menu which would boot into ubuntu, but the menu line to boot into windows failed to allow me access - something about a ntldr or somesuch being missing. I figured that the supergrub dual boot was configured to work off the same common drive and so I am a bit lost.
I have looked at suggestions across the web and have about given up - all very techy and "simple" .
Would really appreciate your assistance to help me solve this last part of the puzzle.

A clear guide to dual booting after installing Ubuntu can be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Ho...ely_on_two_HDs
Don't forget that before partitioning it is wise to backup anything you don't want to lose, run chkdsk and defragment.
I suspect that the boot loader is looking at the wrong partition when trying to load Windows.