Best way to move over to Intel SRT?

[voiidwulf]

I currently have my Windows 8 Pro 64bit installed on a 32GB SSD. I am finding it is too small and annoying to manually manage everything, and I think Intel SRT would be better suited to an SSD of that size. What would the best way to move over my installation without losing all my programs on my 2TB? I have over 650GB in "Games" (Including high-res texture packs and mods and whatnot.), so I can't redownload them all. I have a monthly cap of 250GB and I don't want to redownload them all unnecessarily.

I was thinking the best way to do it would be partition my 2TB and format my SSD. Would this work? Say I split it into 2 1TB partitions, one with all my games and programs on it, and one for Windows. Could I install Windows 8 onto the partition and then merge them after re-installing? I also don't have any installation media. I assume I can download that from MSFT and reactivate with my code.

Thanks,

 

[voiidwulf]

Yup, I've done all of those. I have the recovery disabled too. 32GB is pretty small. When I first installed it I only had about 1GB free.

I'll do the File -> Select BCD Store.

EDIT: I selected the file and for a brief moment the bottom of the Window said something alone the lines of "BCD file loaded." Does that mean it is not currently in use and part of a different Windows installation and not being used by the SSD?

 

[nukemaster]

When i trued to load the BCD from my own system, I got an in use error. I will try on another system to be sure.

When you load it, Does it show the edits you had made? If it does, you should then know that you have the right one.

At that point, you could either leave it as is and use Win8 from the SSD(even if it is booting from the HDD) or try the above. As said, moving windows partition will require a BCD edit from another OS for sure to get it to boot, but if you can get a boot loader onto a small partition on the SSD, then the hard drive will not be booting at all. At that point, you can do what ever you want to it.

If you go that route, I would guess that removing the OS partition(at the end of the HDD) and then extending the files partition to take the rest of the drive would give you what you want.

At that point removing the assigned letter from the system recover partition will make it go away in (My) Computer while not stopping you from booting.

EDIT.

I just tried another system and get the same in use error trying to open it. But if I load another and go back it opens.

I have also installed the BCD to a flash drive to do some tests. If you have a flash drive you can install a boot loader to it to boot the HDD version of windows in the case that its loader becomes damaged. When you boot from it, The error will not happen when loading the BCD from the hard drive.

Now the interesting bit, I am going to TRY to install the boot loader on the Windows partition and not another partition, If this works, You can do the same with the SSD and should be able to select to boot it from the bios(It did not work before because the drive was not bootable).

Wish me luck

 

[voiidwulf]

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth to be honest. I see no reason to move the bootloader now that I am sticking with the SSD as a boot drive.

Thanks for all your help. I wish there was a better way to thank you than just doing best answer.

 

[voiidwulf]

Best answer selected by voiidwulf.

 

[nukemaster]

I edited above. If this gets locked as answered threads do, I will send you a private message in the forum. Shows up on the right top side when you are on the forums with the right column showing.

 

[nukemaster]

One last post I think.

It is up to you, but for fun I just booted an old 120gigabyte HDD with Windows 7 on it and used the BCD Deployment option from EasyBCD then told it to Install on c🙁so you would HAVE to do this when you are on windows from the SSD or select the right drive letter).

Then you have to go to Add new entry and add Windows 8(because you have an empty boot loader on the drive) then select EDIT Boot Menu and give it a nice name to ensure you KNOW you are booting from it and hit Save settings.

On the next boot ensure your bios is set to boot off the SSD and see what it does. For me it was perfect. I even went as far as to remove the system reserved partition and reboot and it still boots perfectly.

This may be JUST what you are looking for on your SSD. It involves no moving of partitions and you can work at getting your HDD all organized again.

My recommendation is once you are happy, remove the OS partition at the end of the drive and use the built in extend partition feature of diskmgmt.msc to extend the files partition to take the rest of the drive. It is the fastest most easy way to at least get things back to normal.

I do recommend in the future that if you want to try to go the SRT rout again, to use either Gparted or partition master to MOVE the files to the end then pre create a partition for Windows, this way YOU are in control.

No system reserved or other boot loader it is ALL on c: You see another system reserved, but that is for my actual load of Win7, this was an old load just to show someone how to do something.

My old system reserved space was big because of some strange thing it did with the Win8 previews I was using on the drive before.

Even I learned lots from playing with BCD settings

I am open to a PM if you get stuck or need help with this kind of thing in the future.