Moving to New HDD (Transferring all files and settings)

Hi guys, I've had a look at the below thread but I'm not sure it's exactly what I'm looking for or asking about.

I have a laptop at the minute with 120GB SSD and 500GB HDD, the SSD is starting to get a bit low on space so I plan to upgrade this to 250GB or maybe even 500GB SSD. I also want the secondary HDD upgraded to 1TB.

Is there anyway to just completely clone these two existing drives (separately) then mount the image onto the new drives, so that all the OS and important apps are on the new SSD as they are now and all the other files are moved to the 1TB HDD?

I'd ideally like to avoid the whole re-install OS scenario although if needs must I will, I have everything as I like it at the moment and would prefer a more or less copy and paste job (I know it's not that simple).

Checked:
Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

As always guys thanks for the help in advance.


Thanks,
Henry

If you're doing this on the same motherboard then there's no reason to adjust the OS to boot on new hardware. Just clone or save a backup image to apply to the new SSD and HD. A good free app to do this that's highly recommended here is Imaging with free Macrium.

For the OS partition you'll want to include the MBR, Track0 and Active flag. If these are not successfully imaged/cloned over then it may be necessary to mark the partition Active to run Startup Repair with the source drive unplugged to get it started.

gregrocker said:

If you're doing this on the same motherboard then there's no reason to adjust the OS to boot on new hardware. Just clone or save a backup image to apply to the new SSD and HD. A good free app to do this that's highly recommended here is Imaging with free Macrium.

For the OS partition you'll want to include the MBR, Track0 and Active flag. If these are not successfully imaged/cloned over then it may be necessary to mark the partition Active to run Startup Repair with the source drive unplugged to get it started.

Hi Gregrocker, thanks for the reply, just to confirm I have a laptop at the minute with 1 SSD and 1 HDD, I want to replace both these drives with a bigger SSD and HDD.

I would like it to be more a less a straight swap, so that when I boot up the computer with the new SSD and HDD they basically pick up where the old drives left off?

Is this possible using the suggested software?


Thanks,
Henry

hmoodie said:

gregrocker said:

If you're doing this on the same motherboard then there's no reason to adjust the OS to boot on new hardware. Just clone or save a backup image to apply to the new SSD and HD. A good free app to do this that's highly recommended here is Imaging with free Macrium.

For the OS partition you'll want to include the MBR, Track0 and Active flag. If these are not successfully imaged/cloned over then it may be necessary to mark the partition Active to run Startup Repair with the source drive unplugged to get it started.

Hi Gregrocker, thanks for the reply, just to confirm I have a laptop at the minute with 1 SSD and 1 HDD, I want to replace both these drives with a bigger SSD and HDD.

I would like it to be more a less a straight swap, so that when I boot up the computer with the new SSD and HDD they basically pick up where the old drives left off?

Is this possible using the suggested software?


Thanks,
Henry

What you want to do is clone the drive. See the following for the difference between cloning and imaging;

Disk Cloning:
Disk cloning is the process of copying the entire contents of one hard drive to another including all the information that enables you to boot to the operating system from the drive. A cloning program enables you to make a one-to-one copy of one of your computer's hard drives on another hard drive. This second copy of the hard drive is fully operational and can be swapped with the computer's existing hard drive. If you boot to the cloned drive, its data will be identical to the source drive at the time it was created. A cloned drive can be used to replace its source drive in a computer in the event that something bad happens to the original drive.

Disk Imaging:
Disk imaging is the process of making an archival or backup copy of the entire contents of a hard drive. A disk image is a storage file that contains all the data stored on the source hard drive and the necessary information to boot to the operating system. However, the disk image needs to be applied to the hard drive to work. You can't restore a hard drive by placing the disk image files on it; it needs to be opened and installed on the drive with an imaging program. Unlike cloned drives, a single hard drive can store several disk images on it. Disk images can also be stored on optical media and flash drives.