Windows 7: Might be missing MBR & 100MB partition on Boot SSD

Doesn't he currently have his programs installed on another partition?

If he wants to have them on the new SSD - it is either reinstall them, or copy them over and make the registry adjustments.

I guess I missed that part. You are correct.

Reinstalling everything is likely to be the most robust way to go. It may even be the fastest if you take all the possible alternate fiddling into account.

I just re-installed Windows not long ago on my 30GB OCZ drive. Once I got my Intel drive squared away:

I just made a Image of the OCZ drive with Acronis (I did disable the PageFile just before Imaging. Recreated once new drive was up and running)
Unplugged it, and hooked up the Intell Drive
Booted from Acronis CD, and restore the Image to the Intel Drive.

It Resized the Image to fit, and everything was fine. Even the alignment.

Boot to Windows and let it re-install drivers and reboot. Then you can hook up the old SSD, and format it.


In my case, I had several games installed on a mechanical HD. As well as Music Library etc on other drives.
Other than installing new drivers for the SSD, everything was normal, including the installed programs on mechanical drives.

BTW, I didnt have a 100MB reserved in my image either.

Greetings All,

The question by essenbe is interesting:

"... is there any reason he cannot clone the drive then extend the C drive in disk management? The clone feature would solve his problems of activating software."

If this is a doable, it would save me about 3-days of uninstalling, reinstalling, updating, and configuring my system and give me the benefit of having all of my programs on the SSD.

I'll keep checking back. Thanks again.

Peace,

Phroneo

Phroneo, That would work if you had everything on the old SSD. I have 2 and do it all the time. However, with your programs on 2 different drives it won't work. You want all programs on one dive as I understand it. If that is the case you may be better off with a clean install since you are going to have to install those programs anyway. Wish I knew something better to tell you. Sorry.

Also, by doing a clean install, you can still work off your old disk until you get your new one set up. That would take some pressure off of having to do everything at once, and may give you better performance from the new SSD. I say a clean install is always best just not as convienent.

If you need to wait to reinstall, you can always image both the Windows 7 and the programs partition to the new SSD using Acronis.

If it holds alignment you should get SSD performance now for your programs and decide if you like it enough to keep it that way.

Gregrocker & essenbe,

I think that I'm going to image my 64GB SSD to my 120 SSD for C: drive OS setup and then image my Program Files (F partition to my 64GB SSD and redirect the Users data to the 1TB WD HDD. That might be a interim answer.

I don't know if this is the forum to ask this next question but I'll try. I've got a simple network in our home with 3 systems on it. I don't yet have central network storage so most of the time we're saving in Network\System1\Users\Public. Because the network is using the Users path, I wondering if redirecting the Users folder will have any effect on this.

Peace,

Phroneo

Hello mate, you may care to have a look at this tutorial at the link below.


User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installations

Thanks for that tutorial on how to move the User Files. It's easy to follow and I'll use it.