Ghosting drive D: to C:

I want to ghost (using Acronis Image Drive) my D: drive to my C: drive (my D: is a RAID 0 config, my C: is a standard HDD). My defaut OS is on D:, but boot.ini is on C: (also running the same OS). Not realizing that boot.ini is on c:, I one day I ghosted my D: drive to C: without realizing that the boot files are all on C:. Well, when I rebooted I got a NTLDR error - it appears that in ghosting I lost all of my boot files. DOH! I fixed the ntldr error with fixboot and fixmbr, but when the OS went to load, I got a boot.ini file is not correct error and the default OS refused to load. I ended up reformatting both drives, but I want to try this again.

Now I think I have 2 options:

I think my problem would be that I installed drive c: and OS and then installed drive d: and OS. Doing this leaves boot files on c: but not on d: even though I use d: as default. Should I reformat both drives and start by installing windows on my raid 0 configuration (current drive d and make that drive c:? That way the single HDD is now drive d: and I could ghost from c: to d:.

My other option would be to copy any boot files from my current drive c: to my drive d: and then ghost. If I do this, what files do I need to copy over? I think this would be the fastest way to get this done, but also more risky if I don't do it right.

 

what exactly are you trying to do? create an identical drive for backup?

if so, why dont you just format and install the OS on the RAID drives, and copy that image straight to the other hard drive using the Acronis boot floppy? there's no need to install the OS on both drives-- Acronis copies all data including the MBR and boot information

 

yes, just trying to have an identical drive for backup! I was just wondering if I could make a clone to c: with my current configuration by somehow transferring all boot information to d: and then cloning.