Buying a new hard drive next week, and obviously i dont want to wipe out my windows, so whats the best way to transfer it?
Clean Install then restore from system image?
or just transfer the system image straight over?
Use Norton/Symantec Ghost or Acronis TrueImage or a freeware alternativ to clone the harddrive.
thanks for the suggestion, but the hard drive is already cloned, thats what the system image is for, im just wondering whether it will accept a system image on a blank hard drive or whether windows needs to be installed first
Reading around, I saw that what you should do is go into System Restore with your 7 Installation disc and choose the image as the source. I've never done this personally but it makes sense. If I'm
wrong, let me know and I'll look around for you.
thanks PRODUCTfred i will see what happens, its not a big deal really but if i understand you right there is no reason for it not to take on a blank hard drive right? cheers :) +rep
Win7 Backup Imaging will reimage a new HD in most cases. You may need to initialize the HD when it is first plugged in.
Boot your Win7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD, select Recover Using a System Image, attempt to
apply image to new HD (plugged alone).
If this fails, plug both HD's and use cloning software to clone old HD to new one.
thanks gregrocker just what i needed, will it automatically partition it into system reserved and windows? or will i need to do that myself?
I did mine using clonezilla (Clonezilla) - fast and free, will work over ethernet too. I've used Partition Master (another free tool that works quickly) on XP to resize the partition after cloning, they claim to work on Windows 7 as well.
You don't need to partition or format, just apply saved image to unformatted HD
sorry i know this is a very old thread now, but the new HDD is finally arriving tomorrow, and i cant find my damn windows disk.... but i have it backed up onto a recovery partition on the old hard drive.
if i plug old HDD into SATA port 1, and new unformatted HDD into SATA port 0, will Windows still boot? or will it look for the MBR on Disk0? im thinking this is probably the easiest way to get the system image onto the new HDD then i can pull the old HDD, i just need the windows boot manager from the old HDD so i can boot the recovery partition
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