Hard drive swap

[mokume1]

I am sure this has been asked hundred of times here, I've searched the forum and cannot find exactly what I am looking for.

Custom built system in which is running Win 7, there are 4 hard drives installed, all are SATA 5400 RPM, 250 GB. All drives are recognized by Windows, there is no RAID array installed.
The drive where the O/S is installed is about to fail, and, of course is designated C:
How do I go about moving the O/S from this drive to one of the remaining 3 hard drives?
This may be or may not be a temporary move, I may replace the about to fail drive later.
Can anyone explain this procedure, step by step in NOOB language?

Thanks in advance !

 

[tlmck]

Go to the drive maker's support web site. They will have software you can download for this purpose.

Alternately, you can use this. http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

 

[inzone]

You can also go into system and recovery and make a system image of your OS and then take out the drive with the OS on it and install a fresh copy of windows on another drive then do a restore from the system image that you created.

 

[RetiredChief]

Inzone's solution is great, one cavet. You should first verify that the files are in "good" shape and that you do not have any bad sectors in the middle of a given file. The image will copy a defective file and you will restore the defective file.

Added a 2nd cavet: once in the control panel, need to click on back up. On the rleft side you will see create backup. Make sure you place the image file on a drive that WILL NOT do the restore to. After image is done you will be prompted to create a bootable repair disk.

From MS:
Answer It's done the same way in Windows 7 as it was in earlier versions of Windows:

1.Open the "Computer" window
2.Right-click on the drive in question
3.Select the "Tools" tab
4.In the Error-checking area, click <Check Now>.

If the drive is failing and you already have corrupted files on the OS drive, it is best to do a re-install of windows and programs.

 

[inzone]

I was interested in the solution that "tlmck" gave so I went to the site he listed and downloaded the free software and cloned my OS onto another drive and it works great and I an using it right now. I haven't fulluly checked out everything but so far it seems to be working fine. I had two SSD's in raid 0 with the OS on it and cloned the OS to a single SSD.

 

[RetiredChief]

^ Was trim enabled, or did you have to edit the registy. Also was the partition properly aligned.

If so EXCELLENT