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General partioning & OS migration questions
Hi,
In the old days, I seem to remember doing a basic 'copy the current os partition to a new hard drive' procedure, to be much easier. but in windows 7, I always seem to be doing something wrong.
What is it that I don't understand about win7 in general that makes this difficult for me, or maybe is just something about hard drives as a whole.
I've been doing installations with win7 since Oct/09 at the release, and each time I've done an install, maybe 10/20 different occasions, each one has shown me a subtle difference and I really just wanna get the facts straight.
If I have just a basic standard install partition setup, why can't I just copy it to a new drive, then re-purpose the old drive? or is it that easy for everyone else, and I'm just crazy.
Some installations make use of a smaller partition ahead of the main, that stores.. something, not sure what. where as others seem to be one solid partition.
My main objective in most installs, is to have the bios boot from the new drive it's self, and not be reliant on the older drives master boot record?
right now, I have a 320gb hd, that I'm trying to migrate to a smaller 80gb drive. I run across this scenario a lot with new computer purchases, b/c the new comp comes with a big-fancy drive that should really be used for storage, but the os drive was purchased separately, thus a migration of the os is kinda the next step for me.
I'd like a workflow for the above, b/c otherwise I end up doing a clean install on the new drive, which isn't always a bad thing, but some times I dont WANT to reinstall drivers, etc.
If I were to just copy the entire 320gb drive, and move it over to the 80gb, then try to boot from the new clone, I'd end up with a: no boot device available msg
Been using EASEUS Partition Master 4, as my main tool.
I miss the days of EIDE, when you could just copy the old install, swap the cables, and said ta-da. again, my issues might have something to do with the whole sata evolution b/c it really doesnt seem to matter if I swap the cable positions any more, right?
so what is it that I'm so blind to in doing this most simplistic of tasks?
Thanks,
Dev.