How to transfer mbr from one drive to another

Aulex

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Nov 27, 2011
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i recently installed an ssd and installed a fresh copy of windows 7 on it, now i was planning to use this as my boot drive, but apparently my mbr is still on my old copy of windows (HDD still has windows installed) now im wondering how can i transfer the mbr to my ssd so i can wipe windows from my old drive.
 
Excuse me but what is an MBR? Also I'm not sure if this is related to what you are asking, but I believe boot drives with Windows on them will only let you take the files off of them if they are in their original systems. So you cannot take your HDD and put it in a friend's PC and get the files off of it because Windows locks the drive to a system. If you want to format your HDD, just connect it to your PC and boot into your Windows disk and in the setup format the HDD you want. Or I believe you can just start into Windows normally and right click on the drive and format that way. I hope I helped.
 
Master Boot Records are specific to the drive. What you needed to to was disconnect the old HDD and then install the SSD in it's place before doing the fresh Windows install. When done, the reattach the old HDD to access the data files. OF course all the programs would have to be reinstalled so they can be accessed via the new Windows installation
 


But wouldn't the HDD still have the mbr files causing a conflict between the two

Edit
Ok so i thought of something, if i wiped the mbr from the hdd, then repair the ssd's mbr would that solve my problem, hypothetically
 
Shouldn't, as long as the SSD stays connected where it was formatted (ideally on the drive controllers primary connector) and the HDD is reattached to a different connector.

When you know the new setup works, temporarily back up the old HDD and reformat it, then reinstall what you want to back to it.


Edit:
Just read the edit. Theoretically possible, I cant advise about that. If you want to try, just back up the old HDD in case you make the data unretrievable