OS split across 2 drives, want to put all on a third

Hi All,

I currently have windows 7 professional 64 bit installed and running fine originally installed only on a 60 GB Agility 3 SSD. I keep running out of disk space on this drive so I purchased a 240 GB PNY SSD and now I want to move my OS to the new drive.

When I tried to do this by making a system image with Windows Backup and Restore it told me that the OS was split across two physical drives, 55 GB on the Agility 3 SSD and about 20 GB on a WD 1TB drive.

I went ahead and made the image it recommended using only the options I couldn't uncheck (both the Agility and the WD 1TB drive data) thereby making a backup of the approximately 75 GB of combined data. I put this image on a seperate HDD, a WD Velociraptor 300GB.

I unplugged all of the drives except the new PNY 240GB drive (empty, but formatted) and the drive with the image (WD Velociraptor 300GB) and booted up with a Windows System Repair disk.

When it gave me the option to restore from an image everything seemed to be working fine until I got an error that said that I needed have the same number of drives and space as the original image contained.

Does this mean I have to have another drive installed so that the image can be spanned across two disks even though I have plenty of room on the new drive?

What I want to do ideally is take the OS from where it currently is (Spanned across the Agility SSD and the WD 1TB) and put it on the new drive (PNY 240GB SSD).

Welcoming any suggestions on how to accomplish this without having to reinstall windows. I have the windows 7 install disk, but I have a ton of installed software that is in storage right now and not easily accessable.

Thanks in advance!

I can do that. I am at work away from the system at the moment though.

Any generic thoughts or is the disk image something that is needed before any advice could be given?

Thanks for such a quick response!

I don't recall ever telling the system to put system files on the 1 TB drive and it wasn't part of the original installation at all so I don't know why there would be any system files there let alone 20 Gb of files needed to image the OS now and I don't know what those files would be. There isn't any hidden partitions I can see on the 1 TB drive and it wasn't labeled as a boot drive.

I may have told the system to put the documents folder on that drive at a later date, but I don't have 20 Gb in my documents folder. Its the 20 GB size of the files windows backup is telling me I need to image that is confusing me. Windows 7 shouldn't need 75 GB of total space for it's install, so why is it needing that much space now?

Thanks again so much for your thoughts and help!

Yes, no problem. I'll post that as soon as I am home and by the system. Thanks again!

I am working for the next 10 hours at this point (2 jobs) so I won't be able to post until then. I have a feeling what is on the other drive is the documents and library folders.

I might try to clone the 60 GB drive to the new 240 GB SSD, expand the partition, and then migrate back the documents and library locations to the new 240 GB now system drive.

I'll have to look up a good cloning program.

You should have noticed when you made the image that it was forcing you to include the data drive, which is almost always because User folders have been moved there. The solution to this is to use another imaging program like Macrium - Image your system. This is the best choice anyways since Win7 imaging is so limited it may not restore to a different size drive at all.

However you can try using Win7 backup imaging if you first move the User shell folders which are now on the data drive back to C. User Folders - Restore Default Location - Windows 7 Forums. You can tell which ones are on the data drive by the icons which are customized for the User shell folders, and from the Location tab on each one's Properties box.