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?
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?
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!
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.
My Computer
At a glance
Windows 7 x64 finally!AMD Athlon II X2 240OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR2 1066 (will not work pas...MSI R4670-MD1G Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit GDDR3
Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
Wally, Innc.
OS
Windows 7 x64 finally!
CPU
AMD Athlon II X2 240
Motherboard
Biostar TA790GX XE
Memory
OCZ Platinum 4GB DDR2 1066 (will not work past 800MHz)
Graphics Card(s)
MSI R4670-MD1G Radeon HD 4670 1GB 128-bit GDDR3
Sound Card
ATI High Definition Audio Device Realtek ALC888
Monitor(s) Displays
HP w19e
Screen Resolution
1440x900
Hard Drives
Western Digital Caviar Green WD5000AADS 500GB SATA
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA
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.
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?
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.
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 WIn7 Backup Image stored now.
