What's the best way to move a windows 7 installation from a hdd to another?

Question

I have a hdd with windows 7 installed on it. I would like to move (or clone) the whole system to another (in this case smaller) hdd. What is the best and easiest way to do it? Basically I would need some kind of copy operation which would handle the differenct hdd sizes and copy everything including the boot loader. What method do you recommend?

Answer 1

Use the Windows Automated install kit and use imagex. When you install the kit you will see step by step walkthru on how to create and image. Skip the sysprep parts and go right to the part where you use imagex. You will then have an image that will be (roughly) as small as possible. Follow the deployment steps on the smaller harddrive. note that you can copy the image right from the larger harddrive to the smaller one then deploy it to the same hardrive it's reading from.

Answer 2

Have a look at sysresccd.org. On the sysresccd bootable CD are tools for copying partitions. That would be one way to do it. However, if you copy a bootable Windows OS partition from the first partition on a hard disk to the second or third, etc, partition on another hard disk, it probably will not boot with out you fixing up the MBR etc. You can do that booting the system from the Windows install CD and going into repair mode (I think it's called). There are some commands like "fixboot" and "fixmbr". Type help for a listing of available commands.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

I know they have a free Edition but I believe what you need is only in the paid edition.

paragon-software .com

There guys also have a paid solution.

partition-tool .com

Answer 4

Well I assume you have a Windows 7 DVD on hand ?

If so click start > right click my computer > manage go to disk management right click your boot drive and select shrink volume. Shrink the disk to smaller than the target drive.

Now grab GParted http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php boot that with both disks plugged in, that will allow you to copy the partition from one disk to another (it would do the shrink too - but I think the Windows way is the better way in this case)

With that done unplug the larger drive and boot the new one. This may or may not fail - if it fails insert the 7 DVD and use the "Fix Windows Option" the first thing that will do is reinstall your bootloader ;-)

Answer 5

You will not believe how easy this is! There are plenty of freeware tools out there these days and I'm sure that there are many conveluted Windows tools that you can use but by far the easiest, I would think, is to use 2 tools by a company called EASEUS.

The tools can be found at the following websites:

• http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/easeus-todo-backup/easustodo.html - EASEUS Todo Backup
• EASEUS Partition Manager

Dont worry about the download source...it's snapfiles.com. They are an extremly handy distributer of freeware newer paid for software and have been around in one form or another for years.

If the the original HDD is larger than the new HDD do the following:

• Install the first item you have downloaded.
• As a precaution, use it to take an image of the system as it is.
• Use an external USB HDD/memory key to remove as much of your data files as possible.
• Install the second item you have downloaded.
  
• Use the software to reduce the size of your primary partition to be slightly smaller than the size of the new HDD.
• Use the second item you have downloaded to take a full image of the HDD as it now is.
  
• Once complete attatch the new HDD to your system and use the first item of software to install the image you have just taken onto it.
• Remove the old HDD from your system (unplug it) and attach the new HDD as the primary master
• Boot up
• Once Windows is loaded, use the first piece of software again to ensure that you have utilised the full compliment of disk space that's available to you.

The above process will leave you with 2 perfectly functioning Windows drives that will be interchangeable should their be any problems.

As far as i can tell from using the software, it also provides the option of being able to mount the backup in a 'revovery' partition & even allows you to create a recovery DVD for if all else fails. For an item of freeware, you just cant go wrong!.

Looking further on Snapfiles.com, it appears that EASEUS also have a clone disk tool.

• http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/EaseUs_Disk_Copy/easeusdiskcopy.html

Not sure if that would combine the best features of the above two pieces of software but, if the software above is anything to go by, I'm pretty sure that it will be a fully featured freeware gem!

Good luck...remember to post feedback of the results.

Answer 6

I'd go with Acronis for something like this. It's a paid solution, but it's great software. You could take an image of the computer, and restore it elsewhere (with the smaller disk is fine). It even has a copy disk option that you could use to just directly copy the disk while still running. Acronis also has a feature called Universal Restore that would allow you to restore the image onto completely new hardware (not just the HDD) if necessary.