Windows 7: Moving To New Hard Drive with Win 7 and Vista

I'm not sure exactly how to do this, so any help is appreciated. I currently have a hard drive with two partitions dual booting Win 7 and Vista. I need to move both OS's to a new hard drive. I've made a full backup of the drive with the Macrium Reflect program, but I don't know if restoring it on a new hard drive using the recovery CD will work. Will there be any problems booting the operating systems afterwards? Is there a better way or better program to do this? Does the type or brand of the new hard drive make a difference?

smengler, I have used Macrium reflect to do that with my XP system. I simply cloned the old hard drive to the new one.

Another handy program for this is EaseUS, it has a clone function that does exactly that.

I take that you want to transfer everything, not only the OSs, right? If the latter, better just perform clean installs.

Please also take a look at this thread, those are problems you might find (and solutions)

Will it still work, even with a dual-boot? I would perform a clean install, but I just finished doing that and reloading all my programs before I found out my hard drive is failing. Will it still work without a clean install?

smengler, check the thread I just added to my post. It might not work depending on how the copy goes, some very good advice on that thread.

You are trying to transfer from the failing drive to a new one, is that correct?

Yes, I'm trying to transfer from my failing drive to a new one. I think all I can do now is to try it. I'll let you know how it goes and if I have any problems. Thanks for your help!

Hello smengler, welcome to Seven Forums!



Yes, do post back so we will know how it sorts out.

I am trying to remember how I exactly did it with my XP system and I think I used EaseUS, not Macrium, since it has a clone function which specifically states it migrates the Operating system

Whatever you do, keep the backup you have already made safe and don't discard of it until you are sure everything is running OK.

You should be able to restore the macrium images to the new drive, take the "replace with mbr from backup" option.

Make sure you set the correct one Active during restore ( the same one that was active on your original system ).

The only issue you may have is if windows detects there are 2 HD's connected with the same Disk ID.

It will change the Disk ID on the second HD it detects. Since the bcd entry uses the Disk Id , you will need to run startup repair from the 7 dvd if that happens.

You need to restore 1 partition image at a time with Macrium.

I'm going to try first with Macrium, then EaseUS. The "replace with mbr from backup" option is during the recovery, not the backup, right?

Does this mean if you have two connected at the same time, or that it will remember the previous drive that had the same id?

Will the Vista one still be able to boot? I've never used the startup repair before.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Most new HD's come bundled with free cloning software, or it's available on their Support Downloads webpage.

Cloning is a step better than drive imaging for transferring to another HD, however as your existing HD could fail at any moment I would get a Macrium Reflect and Windows 7 Backup Image stored now.