Windows 7: Mirroring partition to VHD

Hi, I'm wondering if its possible to copy a partition entirely (including boot record) onto a VHD file I made using diskpart.

EDIT: I went out and got Norton Ghost to do the job... because no internet search was turning up how to do it without Ghost.

For VHD:

While attached, go to either diskpart or Disk Management and make it "active".

Then, make sure you have \bootmgr file and \boot hidden folder in the VHD image.

That's it. It should work just fine.

Do you mean simply copying everything will work, aslong as I get \boot\ and \bootmgr aswell?

Yes , but you need to have bcdedit's {bootmgr} set to this partition too.

Would I have to do that if I just add the .vhd file as a boot item? And how do I unhide \boot\ and \bootmgr? I've turned off hiding protected system files and hidden files but it's not appearing.

You will find \bootmgr and \boot in the hidden partition of Windows 7, the small 200MB one. You need to assign a drive letter to it first, from Disk Management, and then you can access it.

Uhm.. the partition I want to copy to the VHD is a Vista install, not Windows 7...

Then you should be able to see the \bootmgr file and \boot folder in the root partition of Vista.

They aren't there - even directly typing D:\boot\ says that the folder does not exist. The files DO exist in my Windows 7 partition though. Does this mean that there IS no boot record on the Vista partition?

Yes, after the Windows 7 installation, they have moved to the Windows 7 partition probably. I don't think Windows 7 keeps the Vista ones , it switches to its own for both OSes, if it finds Vista during install. Just a thought, not sure. But if you don't have them in Vista's partition, that's the case