How to migrate Operating system to a SSD without removing the old drive

[dennisresevfan]

My system is a bit of a mess. Currently I have a total of four actual physical drives.

Drive 0 is an ancient HDD containing the Windows 7 OS partition and two data partitions.

Drive 1 is another ancient HDD containing a dual booted Windows XP OS partition (Which doesn't boot up anymore, it's broken somehow.) and data partitions.

Drive 2 is a 840 Evo SSD filled with games to speed up load times. (Really helps in some.) Single partition.

Drive 3 is a 1TB Samsung HDD used for data storage. Single partition.

I'm about to purchase one or two Corsair MX 300 SSDs since the price is dirt cheap. I intend to use one for Windows 7.

So I have a few issues I'd really appreciate help with.

1. Is there a way to get rid of that useless Windows XP partition without the PC messing up and being unable to load into Windows 7? Is there any MBR/dual boot related weirdness to sort out? XP was installed first.

2. If I want to use a migration program to copy the Windows 7 installation/partition onto the new SSD but don't want to fill up the SSD with the data partition from Drive 0, is this possible? Can I copy Windows 7 onto the SSD and wipe the old partition? (And if I migrate Windows 7, again, do I need to fix the MBR or something like that?)

If it came to it, I could remove Drive 0 entirely and migrate the data partitions as well since the total is under 200GB and the new SSD would be 750GB.

3. If NOT deleted, would that Windows 7 partition on the old HDD interfere with Windows 7 on the SSD?

4. I have a Gigabyte UD3R motherboard with one of those crappy SATA 3 Marvell chips. So I'm not sure what to do regarding plugging in which drive where... Any advice?
I think my current SSD MIGHT be plugged into the Marvell chip. To my understanding that means if I plug another one in there, it ends up halving the theoretical max performance of each?

5. Is it worth trying to RAID? Using the Marvell chip would screw this up, right? And the alternative is using Sata II ports.

 

[Max1s]

There does exist software to migrate OS's to other drives, although I have never used any and can't give you any names, someone just mentioned that it's possible on another thread.

As for question #1, I know you can make a bootable partition manager CD with GParted that you could use to format the XP partition, but I don't think you'd be able to just "add" that space onto the other partition...

 

[SkyNetRising]

Post screenshot from Disk Management.

 

[Bigpuns1]

Hi Dennis, sure you cant just wipe them all and start with a fresh install?

Failing that, here goes...

1. Assuming you never intend to use XP any more, just backup the data parts somewhere, reformat the whole drive and repartition as you see fit. The XP boot records shouldn't cause any conflicts with the 7 mbr, especially given they are on seperate drives.

2. You would only be able to "transfer" the windows 7 install onto a partition that's exactly the same size as the partition that 7 is currently installed on. You might be better just doing a fresh install of the os on the new drive, prepartitioned as you wish.

3. You can have a different version of windows installed on every drive. As long as the boot order is set correctly in BIOS you will be fine. One will be the boot disk, the rest will just be treated as data, until you decide to boot from another drive.

4. How desperate are you to maximise the bandwidth available to your ssd? If it's not that vital, I would be inclined to just get them reinstalled and working before you try rearranging port orders.

5. Whether it's worth the time and effort sorting out Raid on your various drives depends on what you use them for. Given what a mishmash of drives, partitions and os's you have, I would suggest it's probably not going to be worth the headache.

hth

 

[Brandon Taylor]

your best option is to recover the key, download iso and reinstall os, then move all needed data to ssd

 

[dennisresevfan]

Hi Dennis, sure you cant just wipe them all and start with a fresh install?

Failing that, here goes...

1. Assuming you never intend to use XP any more, just backup the data parts somewhere, reformat the whole drive and repartition as you see fit. The XP boot records shouldn't cause any conflicts with the 7 mbr, especially given they are on seperate drives.

2. You would only be able to "transfer" the windows 7 install onto a partition that's exactly the same size as the partition that 7 is currently installed on. You might be better just doing a fresh install of the os on the new drive, prepartitioned as you wish.

3. You can have a different version of windows installed on every drive. As long as the boot order is set correctly in BIOS you will be fine. One will be the boot disk, the rest will just be treated as data, until you decide to boot from another drive.

I can address other posts later, but for now...

Reinstalling is the last thing I want to do considering all the games and software I have installed.

1. Well, I COULD do that. But is there an advantage to reformatting the entire drive? I'm not sure what is gained by doing that. I would mess up software installations if I go moving the partitions they're installed on elsewhere, right?

Regarding the boot record I'm a little confused because I could have sworn I remember someone telling me there would be issues. That may have been if I reinstalled XP though. Is it that it's OK with Windows 7 because it's already the latest OS installed on the system?

2. Can you elaborate on this? Why does it need to be a same-sized partition? I thought there was an option in the disk manager to extend partitions anyway. So even if this is the case, can't I just do this and then extend the partition afterwards? (Also is it that I manually need to set up the partition size to be the same, or is this something done automatically when you use the migration software?)

3. Potentially dumb question time... But assuming I do copy Win7 onto the new drive, will it keep all my software installations correctly as long as the install locations are still present?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Just post screenshot from Disk Management. Without that it's really hard to picture your setup.

Basically you need yo transfer bootloader partition and windows partition to your new SSD.
If you do that correctly and change boot order in BIOS after that, then nothing needs to be reinstalled.

 

[dennisresevfan]

Screenshot from Disk Management:
https://i.imgsafe.org/ea8f3ca063.jpg

I see no bootloader partition shown. Where would that be?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Bootloader partition is the one that reads "System" - your drive E:
OS partition is the one that reads "Boot" - your drive C:
Both of them currently are needed to start your computer.

 

[SkyNetRising]

You said, you wanted to get rid of winxp partition. You can do that also.

When you get your new SSD:
1. Create bootloader partition on new SSD (size = 200MB, primary, active);
2. Clone windows 7 partition to new SSD (extend it to al least 70GB, because 40GB is way too little);
3. Shutdown your PC and temporarily disconnect all drives except your new SSD;
4. Boot from windows 7 installation media and repair your new bootloader partition.
Here is how:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/
5. Shutdown your PC and reconnect all your drives;
6. Reboot your PC into BIOS and set new SSD as primary boot drive;
7. Boot into windows and verify in Disk Management that "Boot" and "System" partitions are located on your new SSD.
8. It is possible, that you'll need to change drive letter of your windows partition. But we'll get to that later, if necessary.

 

[dennisresevfan]

1. Create bootloader partition on new SSD (size = 200MB, primary, active);

Are you referring to manually creating a normal 200MB partition using Disk Management, or is this something else done elsewhere? I mean I don't actually see anything on my PC at the moment called a bootloader partition or with that size. Is it hidden? I thought it was just part of the Windows partition so I'm unclear on what I'm creating here.

Also, my SSD just turned up and it came with Acronis True Image HD 2015 software.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9TxmRQIU20

As seen here it claims to "make the new drive bootable" but I'm not sure exactly what that means.

Assuming I use this software does it change the list of steps you posted? There's no mention of a bootloader partition in the instructional video.

http://www.mysysadmintips.com/windows/clients/236-move-windows-7-bootloader-to-another-disk

Would it be possible to just use this to move the bootloader into Windows 7's partition (I am assuming the bootloader partition is hidden within it?) now, then use Acronis to move the whole lot, bootloader included, onto the SSD?

Maybe I can avoid unplugging everything that way since the PC shouldn't have any way of "getting confused".

 

[SkyNetRising]

Yes - create 200MB partition manually - it will be your new bootloader partition.
You wanted to get rid of windows XP partition, right? Old Windows XP partition (drive E: ) - is your current bootloader partition.

I'm afraid Acronis True Image - clone automatic mode is not advanced enough to deal with your configuration.
You'll need to use manual mode or some more advanced cloning software like Acronis Disk Director.

With Acronis True Image -steps #1 and #2 will have to be performed in reverse order, because Acronis True Image wipes target drive when cloning.

 

[dennisresevfan]

Yes - create 200MB partition manually - it will be your new bootloader partition.
You wanted to get rid of windows XP partition, right? Old Windows XP partition (drive E: ) - is your current bootloader partition.

I'm afraid Acronis True Image - clone automatic mode is not advanced enough to deal with your configuration.
You'll need to use manual mode or some more advanced cloning software like Acronis Disk Director.

With Acronis True Image -steps #1 and #2 will have to be performed in reverse order, because Acronis True Image wipes target drive when cloning.

I think I sorted out the bootloader issue. I used EasyBCD to put bootloader files on the windows 7 partition and then changed the drive order in the BIOS.

My Windows 7 partition (the current/old one) is now both the system and boot drive.

So I guess I just need to copy it across to the new drive.

But I still don't understand this bootloader partition thing. To my understanding it just goes in your current Windows install partition. So right now if I was to copy the windows 7 partition over to the new SSD, it would also copy the boot loader.

Is that not the case? I've never seen a separate bootloader partition. I'm not sure how I would write the bootloader files to it instead of the Windows partition.

Also, what is gained by this? I've always thought it was best to have it on the same partition as windows.

 

[SkyNetRising]

When you install windows on empty drive, separate bootloader partition is created automatically.
This is done to be possibe to install multiple operating systems on same computer.
For example windows supports fat32 and ntfs file systems natively;
Linux supports fat32 and their own file systems - Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, ReiserFs or some other exotic FS.

To be able to boot Linux and Windows - bootloader must reside on fat32 - so both OS-es can read it.

Here are default windows partition configuration for MBR and UEFI setups:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744364(v=ws.10).aspx
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825702.aspx

 

[dennisresevfan]

I gather from one of those links that it's a good idea to have system and recovery partitions separately so you can perform repairs on just the windows partition. Is that right?

OK, but I still don't really know what I'm doing here. If I use the cloning software it will presumably copy everything from the windows partition into a single partition on the new SSD.

That would include the boot files, right? Since they're currently on that partition.

I don't understand what exactly to actually put onto this separate system partition. Or how.

My OS installs have never had such a partition created in the past. This is an entirely new concept for me.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Separate bootloader partition allows you to easily fix bootloader problems without messing up OS partition.
Also installation of multiple OS-es is easier if bootloader has separate partition (sometimes it's the only possible way).

But bootloader and OS on same partition also will work.
Recreating bootloader partition was described in this link:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/
In summary -
a. Startup repair
b. bootrec /fixmbr
c. bootrec /fixboot
d. bootrec /rebuildbcd
(this step was omitted there)

 

[dennisresevfan]

Oh wait, so you're saying I just create the right type of partition and then the "repair" option is actually going to create the bootloader on that partition and that's all that needs to be done about that?

In that case could I simplify matters by using the EasyBCD program?

I guess I'd have to initialise the SSD manually, create the boot partition manually (also a recovery partition), then use Acronis to copy the windows install over to the larger partition and then just tell EasyBCD to put the bootloader on the small one.

Problem solved without unplugging all the drives or rebooting the PC over and over again.

Let me know if this sounds stupid but I think it should work.

By the way, what sizes would you recommend for the various partitions? The drive is 750GB.
200mb for the bootloader partition. Maybe 100GB for windows 7, or do you think bigger is a good idea? I'm not sure what I need for recovery. I'd probably just keep one or two recovery points on it.

Wouldn't hurt to have the other space partitioned for installing games.

 

[SkyNetRising]

so you're saying I just create the right type of partition and then the "repair" option is actually going to create the bootloader on that partition and that's all that needs to be done about that?

That's right.

In that case could I simplify matters by using the EasyBCD program?

Probably .. if it copy bootloader from one partition to another.

I guess I'd have to initialise the SSD manually, create the boot partition manually (also a recovery partition), then use Acronis to copy the windows install over to the larger partition and then just tell EasyBCD to put the bootloader on the small one.

Well - Acronis True image overwrites target drive, so you can create boot partition only after acronis cloning
(or use some more advanced cloning software).

By the way, what sizes would you recommend for the various partitions? The drive is 750GB.
200mb for the bootloader partition. Maybe 100GB for windows 7, or do you think bigger is a good idea?

Sounds about right.
I find that for windows7 partition comfortable minimum is ~70GB
(of course it depends on software you install on OS partition).

 

[dennisresevfan]

Success!

Things did not quite go to plan.

Acronis' software was useless and couldn't choose a destination drive no matter what I did. I ended up using AOEMEI Backup software. I refused to post spam links for them to unlock "clone system" so I cloned the Windows 7 partition and manually made a new MBR on said partition (didn't make a new one. I may later.)

It seems to all be working fine so far. I went with about 200GB of space for Windows to fill up with useless crap files.

I've not yet actually made a recovery partition because when I looked it up, it seems that it's exactly equivalent to using the Windows 7 install disc to perform a recovery. And I have the disc.

Or did you have something else in mind rather than it essentially being a disk image?