Moving Boot Data to Data Drive

astronomicat

New member
So I've been using my 64GB ssd as my windows 7 boot drive and i have a 1TB hdd as my data drive. Recently the my computer has begun to freeze up with errors like "explorer.exe" has stopped responding or "windows" has stopped responding and half of the time when i try to boot it says it cant find windows. This has lead me to believe that my ssd is dying despite being only a year old. I need to RMA my ssd but to do that i would be losing my boot drive for weeks. So I thought id try to create a system image so that i can simply put my boot drive on my hdd, but when i try to create the image it says that the image would be 711GB because its including all of my hdd (which contains all my user libraries and downloads). My question is: how do I make windows stop thinking that my hdd is a system drive so that I can create a reasonably sized image, or more generally: how can i easily move my boot drive to my hdd? Also, I've read some posts about using "easyBCD" to accomplish the latter but I'm not sure that's exactly what i need in this situation. If someone can clarify that that would be great too.
Thanks.
 

My Computer

OS
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Hello Astronomicat, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) screen show the full layout of all HDDs? This may be able to help determine why it is including more than your 64GB Windows 7 SSD in the system image. :)
Did you move your page file, user profile folder, or user folders to another HDD/partition location other than the default C: ? If so, then those locations would be included in a system image as well, and cannot be unselected until they are moved back to the default location.
 

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Self built custom
OS
64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
CPU
Intel i7-8700K OC'd to 5 GHz
Motherboard
ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
Memory
64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz
Graphics Card(s)
ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
Sound Card
Integrated
Monitor(s) Displays
2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
Screen Resolution
2560x1440
Hard Drives
1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2,
4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2,
TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus NAS
PSU
Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
Case
Thermaltake Core P3
Cooling
Corsair Hydro H115i
Keyboard
Logitech wireless K800
Mouse
Logitech MX Master 4
Internet Speed
2 Gb/s Download and 100 Mb/s Upload
Antivirus
Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium
Browser
Google Chrome
Other Info
Logitech Z625 speaker system,
Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam,
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn,
APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI,
Galaxy S23 Plus phone
Yes I moved my users folders to my hdd because the libraries had my music and movies which couldnt fit on my ssd.

I can see now that its this "System Reserved (D:)" that is the problem. whatever that is. so is there a way i can get rid of this or move it to disk 0?
 

My Computer

OS
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit
Yeah, you'll need to restore your user folders back to C to not have the HDD they are currently on included in the system image. Since you are just wanting to save HDD space on C, then you might consider this below to be able to access the files from your libraries with the files actually located where you like instead. This way you will not have to worry about any potential issues that come with moving user folder locations, and these files being included in a system image.
You will not want to remove the "System Reserved" partition since it is the "Active" system partition. If you like, posting back with a screenshot of your Disk Management window will help to see what options you may have.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

Computer type
PC/Desktop
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Self built custom
OS
64-bit Windows 11 Pro for Workstations
CPU
Intel i7-8700K OC'd to 5 GHz
Motherboard
ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
Memory
64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz
Graphics Card(s)
ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
Sound Card
Integrated
Monitor(s) Displays
2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
Screen Resolution
2560x1440
Hard Drives
1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2,
4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2,
TerraMaster F8 SSD Plus NAS
PSU
Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
Case
Thermaltake Core P3
Cooling
Corsair Hydro H115i
Keyboard
Logitech wireless K800
Mouse
Logitech MX Master 4
Internet Speed
2 Gb/s Download and 100 Mb/s Upload
Antivirus
Malwarebyte Anti-Malware Premium
Browser
Google Chrome
Other Info
Logitech Z625 speaker system,
Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam,
HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn,
APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI,
Galaxy S23 Plus phone
As Brink said, move anything considered "system" back to your system drive.
I don't use any of the Win system libraries. That's data, and I target data to reside on the spinner.
You mentioned using your 1TB spinner as your new system drive because the SSD might be going bad.
That's could be another can of worms. If the 1TB is one partition you can't put an image of the SSD there and restore to the same 1TB partition.
That reserved partition is another story that some here know how to handle.
Really need more info, as Brink suggested.
 

My Computer

Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Home Built
OS
Windows 7 Ultimate x64
CPU
QuadCore Intel Core i7 920, 2666 MHz (20 x 133)
Motherboard
Asus P6T
Memory
6134 MB (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
Graphics Card(s)
(2 - SLI) NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 (1024 MB)
Sound Card
Onboard Realtek ALC888/1200 @ Intel 82801JB IC
Monitor(s) Displays
HDMII
Screen Resolution
1280 x 800
Hard Drives
Crucial M4 (64 GB SSD)
WD Caviar Blacks
WD5001AALS-00J7B1 ATA Device (465 GB)
WD5001AALS-00J7B1 ATA Device (465 GB)
WD5001AALS-00L3B2 ATA Device (465 GB)
WD Elements USB External (250 GB)
PSU
Corsair 550
Case
iStarUSA S-10000BL Black
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