Question Cloning OS to a specific partition

[alexmark]

Forgive me if this has been asked a hundred times before, I figured this would be a common question but I cannot for the life of me find any threads of someone moving their old OS to another drive without having the new drive wiped first. This ended up longer than expected so there's a TLDR at the bottom

I've currently got windows 7 on a Samsung 840 250Gb ssd (Disk 0, MBR) and I'm looking to move it to my Samsung 980pro 1tb ssd (Disk 3, GPT) which currently has windows 10 installed and another partition for storage.

Ideally I want to move everything from Disk 0 in to the 488gb partition [MAIN OS(I: )] to have both operating systems on the 1tb SSD making dual-booting easier but almost every option I've come across requires the target ssd/hard drive to be wiped and formatted beforehand.

Samsung data migration was my first plan but it states that all data on the target drive will be lost.

AOMEI has the same issue as above but it also has an option to clone a specific partitions which sounds promising but from what I've read it doesn't copy hidden partitions so the cloned partition wont be bootable.

Macrium reflect 8 looks like the best option but i was wondering Is cloning my OS on as simple as dragging my C: partition on top of "5-MainOS(I: )" partition then expanding to the maximum partition size or is there more to it? should I unallocate that partition beforehand and is there any issues that will come up going from MBR to GPT?

TLDR: Looking to clone an OS to 1tb ssd without existing data on the ssd being wiped, is what I'm doing in macrium reflect the simplest was to achieve this?

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you can "probably" clone that single partition into a space on the other drive.

However, what will happen to the boot partition(s)?

I would only try this with known good backups of all drives involved.


Question - Why this move from the 840 to a piece of the 980?

 

[alexmark]

Yes, you can "probably" clone that single partition into a space on the other drive.

However, what will happen to the boot partition(s)?

I would only try this with known good backups of all drives involved.


Question - Why this move from the 840 to a piece of the 980?

I'm unsure what boot partition(s) you're asking about, I figured everything required to boot my old OS was contained within the 233gb partition, no additional system reserved partitions exist from what I can see.

The goal is to dual boot off of the 1tb SSD, having both OS's on it makes doing that far simpler than what I'm currently doing which is manually going into the bios an booting from the 1tb when I need to use win10.
I'll definitely be taking images of both drives before doing this.

 

[TerryLaze]

AOMEI has the same issue as above but it also has an option to clone a specific partitions which sounds promising but from what I've read it doesn't copy hidden partitions so the cloned partition wont be bootable.

The goal is to dual boot off of the 1tb SSD, having both OS's on it makes doing that far simpler than what I'm currently doing which is manually going into the bios an booting from the 1tb when I need to use win10.
I'll definitely be taking images of both drives before doing this.

Windows uses the BCD to boot into partitions, you can use the free version of easyBCD to add the 1Tb disk to the boot menu of windows 7.
Same thing if you do the cloning, you will still have to edit BCD to add windows 7 to the windows 10 (1Tb disc) boot menu.

 

[alexmark]

Windows uses the BCD to boot into partitions, you can use the free version of easyBCD to add the 1Tb disk to the boot menu of windows 7.
Same thing if you do the cloning, you will still have to edit BCD to add windows 7 to the windows 10 (1Tb disc) boot menu.

Whoa I didn't know this was a possibility, I'm still leaning towards cloning as that SSD is pushing 7 years old by now and having extra space on my main os never hurts, but if that doesn't work out this is definitely a great workaround for what I'm after.

 

[USAFRet]

Currently, each OS and its boot partition lives on 2 distinct drives.
You choose which one at boot up time, by selecting that physical drive.

If you were to clone the Win 7 onto a space on the same physical drive, you no longer have that option.
You'd have to manually edit the Win 10 boot partition to include a selection for the Win 7 install.

What do you use the Win 7 for?
Maybe that would be better in a VM?

 

[alexmark]

Currently, each OS and its boot partition lives on 2 distinct drives.
You choose which one at boot up time, by selecting that physical drive.

If you were to clone the Win 7 onto a space on the same physical drive, you no longer have that option.
You'd have to manually edit the Win 10 boot partition to include a selection for the Win 7 install.

What do you use the Win 7 for?
Maybe that would be better in a VM?

I'm still on win7 out of personal preference with 10 as a dual boot if I want to run something with minimum requirements>win7.

You'd have to manually edit the Win 10 boot partition to include a selection for the Win 7 install.

That's the plan, I'm expecting there to be a 15 sec timer during start up to select which os to boot until it defaults to win7. Hopefully what I'm planning on doing in macrium will be able to do this with no issues, if not there's always the work around TerryLaze mentioned.

Thanks to both of you for all the help.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm still on win7 out of personal preference with 10 as a dual boot if I want to run something with minimum requirements>win7.


That's the plan, I'm expecting there to be a 15 sec timer during start up to select which os to boot until it defaults to win7. Hopefully what I'm planning on doing in macrium will be able to do this with no issues, if not there's always the work around TerryLaze mentioned.

Thanks to both of you for all the help.

There is not a function in Mscrium to do that.

The clone, yes.
The editing of the boot partition, I don't think so.


Again, I would only do this with a known good full drive backup of everything involved.

 

[alexmark]

There is not a function in Mscrium to do that.

The clone, yes.
The editing of the boot partition, I don't think so.


Again, I would only do this with a known good full drive backup of everything involved.

The clone completed without any issues that I know of but I'm guessing I must've missed a step, I had assumed I would see windows 7 in this drop-down menu

Would you know if there are additional steps needed to make the partition bootable or how to confirm if already is?

I gave easyBCD a shot on win10 by just adding the new partition in the boot menu but booting from (I: )instantly crashes.

Testing easyBCD on win7 adding my partition (H: ) with windows 10 installed didn't result in a crash but an error.