Need advice moving a win7 install to a new HDD and sata adapter.

In the past I've migrated 7 from one hdd to another by doing a backup to a usb drive, then swapping the drives and restoring to the new one.

What I need to do now is a twist on that. My MB is one of the new p67s that has the faulty intel sata ports, and will eventually be recalled. The 4 6Gps sata ports on the board are not affected by the chipset problem, so i plan on just using them instead(plus i just got a 6G seagate drive that I wanted to use anyway).

What I envision happening is restoring to the new drive on an entirely different sata adapter and port #, and the system not booting. I assume i could get around this by booting to a command prompt and using bcedit, but am not 100% on that.

Can someone recommend a good way to do this, or if my idea sounds fine, confirm it?

thanks!

dronf said:

In the past I've migrated 7 from one hdd to another by doing a backup to a usb drive, then swapping the drives and restoring to the new one.

What I need to do now is a twist on that. My MB is one of the new p67s that has the faulty intel sata ports, and will eventually be recalled. The 4 6Gps sata ports on the board are not affected by the chipset problem, so i plan on just using them instead(plus i just got a 6G seagate drive that I wanted to use anyway).

What I envision happening is restoring to the new drive on an entirely different sata adapter and port #, and the system not booting. I assume i could get around this by booting to a command prompt and using bcedit, but am not 100% on that.

Can someone recommend a good way to do this, or if my idea sounds fine, confirm it?

thanks!

Hello dronf, and welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

You have left out lots of info that would help answer your question. Is this a Desktop Computer? A laptop?

With my desktop, I use a second hard drive to save an image created by Windows Seven backup utility. When the OS hard drive failed, I just swapped for a new hard drive, booted to my 7 install DVD, and restored the OS to the new hard drive.

You could do something similar and just as easy. You have the choice of saving the image on either the old hard drive or the new hard drive. If you do not have an install DVD, have Windows 7 make you a repair CD for you to boot from and restore the image to the new hard drive.

If you wish to give more details about your computer, I am sure we can offer some good suggestions for you to choose from?

Cheers!
Robert

It is a desktop. I've used the backup and restore many times before with success(burning and using a repair cd to boot from), but it was always to another hard drive plugged into the same port. In this case it is not only a different port, but on a different sata controller altogether.

Take a look at this tutorial:
Windows 7 Installation - Transfer to a New Computer

dronf said:

It is a desktop. I've used the backup and restore many times before with success(burning and using a repair cd to boot from), but it was always to another hard drive plugged into the same port. In this case it is not only a different port, but on a different sata controller altogether.

If you remove the old hard drive, the computer bios will search for and find the boot files on the new drive. Otherwise you can open the bios utility and specify the new hard drive as the first in boot order. The computer will boot the OS on the new hard drive.

Cheers!
Robert

Try reimaging per normal to new HD/port. If it balks, plug old HD back into old port and SysPrep using steps in theog's tutorial, then save another image, clone/reimage it to new HD in new port and it will start up to reinstall all drivers automatically.

If either HD is Seagate or Acronis, you can use their free Acronis cloning/imaging app to clone over HD easily. Look on Support Downloads webpage for your model HD.

I had a working Windows 7 Home Premium system installed on a 20GB IDE (master) drive on a FOXCONN M61PMP motherboard. There were also a DVD drive as an IDE slave, and a 1GB SATA drive installed. The BIOS boot sequence was DVD-IDE-Floppy. Everything worked as expected.

I decided the 20GB HDD was ready for the museum, so I re-installed the OS on the SATA drive. I changed the boot sequence to DVD-SATA-Floppy, and everything still worked. I then removed the IDE drive altogther, and changed the DVD drive to be the IDE master. No changes were made to the SATA adapter or drive. The BIOS recognized everything properly, and was configured to boot in the order: DVD-HDD-Floppy (!).

The system will no longer boot from anything. Any ideas?