Can I copy my old Win 7 pro hdd to a new faster and larger drive?

I'm new to backing up or copying in windows 7 pro.

I'm having some issues with my current Hdd and i really don't want to go through the reinstallation and find all the programs and such.

I currently only have a 60 gig hdd for my c drive.

I'm looking to expand and get like a 500gig drive.

Can I format a partition to be 60 gigs or slightly larger and copy the data over? and then afterwards (just so the system doesn't throw a fit about the different hard drive size) just add on the rest of the partition as i believe an extension to the partition?

Hi!

Welcome to the forums. What you can do is clone your current drive and put it onto the new drive. You can do this with a load of different pieces of software but you need to be aware that this will deactivate your machine, and you'll need to reactivate it when youre done.

5 Ways To Clone & Copy Your Hard Drive

Oh and you wont need to partition the drive to the same size as your previous installation, Windows can cope!

you can't simply copy it--you need to make a disk image of the drive -- see these links:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html?filter[2]=Backup%20Restore

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/675-system-image-recovery.html?filter[2]=Backup%20Restore

Macrium is highly recommended program and the new V5 has a Clone feature and its free. I use it all the time to do an image backup.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

Jim

Before we go on with the guess work I suggest you post a picture of your full disk management. Then we can give you more precise advice Like this one:

This is my current drive.. now that i look at it, maybe it'd have to be a 1TB, at the time i thought 60gigs or so would have been enough but i was incorrect.

1. You have 300GB right now. The size of the new drive ahould be a function of what you intend to do.

2. I am not a friend of cloning. I would just image the C: partition after I transferred the bootmgr from the 100MB partition to C:. Then I would dump that image into a predefined partition on the new HDD.

3. The 2 data partitions I would define with Disk Management once the new system is running on the new disk. Then you can move that data over.

If you are interested in this approach, let me know and I give you the detailed steps - also tell me how big you would like the C; partition on the new drive.

yes that information would be interesting. I am not sure how to transfer the boot manager and merge it to the c drive..

I was just looking up the cost of my old drive (1tb, it crashed and can't get anything off it.. I had it in an external drive casing and a 5 inch drop killed the drive).. and it seems the 55 bucks i spent on it has gone up to 150 bucks.. so i'm not sure what size drive i'm going to get 750gig or 1tb. I do believe the C drive this time will be 150gigs or maybe 200 gigs.

I'll try and delete more data in the mean time.. Wish i could get the 1tb up and running but the drop seemed to kill everything on it.

OK, here are the steps:

1. you move the bootmgr to C: - very easy. Just follow this tutorial, 3 steps.

2. image the C: partition with free Macrium. Another tutorial. Make sure you burn the WinPE recovery CD. That is a bit lenghty because during the process Macrium will download a 1.7GB MS WAIK program. But it is much better than the Linux version.

3. define 1 partition for the OS on your new disk. For that we use Command Prompt which you have to run as admin. The commands are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your new disk in List disk)
Create partition primary size=150000 (that would be 150GB)
Active
Exit

4. Restore the image of C: to that new partition using the WinPE recovery disc.

5. Change the BIOS boot sequence to boot from the new disk.

6. Go into Disk Management, right click on all the unallocated space we left on the disk and define new simple partitions (one after another) for your data.

If you have any questions, ask.