Moving OS to a different drive

I'm guessing that Disk 2 is the new larger drive. Notice that neither of the partitions on Disk 2 is marked as "system". That's why it won't boot.

Notice that partition G on the old Disk 0 IS marked "system". That's why you can boot if it's connected.

The "system" marker indicates "this partition contains the boot files necessary to boot your PC".

You can most likely fix that by copying the system files from G to the System Reserved partition on Disk 2. You might have to use a third party program like EasyBCD to do that. Or maybe you can do it by disconnecting Disk 2 and running "System Repair".

I think there is an EasyBCD tutorial on this site.

EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies

Or---start over and use Macrium imaging rather than Macrium cloning. Be sure to include ALL partitions on Disk 0 when you make the image. You'd have one image file and just need to restore it to the new drive.

Imaging is usually more problem-free than cloning. I don't use cloning at all, but I'm pretty sure you're situation is fixable if you don't want to try imaging instead.

Others can likely give you more precise instructions.

You need to select drive E as the destination for the image.

C and "System Reserved" must be part of that image. I'd select the choice on the left of the Macrium screen that says "create an image of the partitions required to backup and restore Windows". Make sure E is the destination.

That image file should be roughly 20 or 30 gb in size and will fit on E easily.

See if you can get that far--making the image file and storing it on E, and then repost.

The next step after that would be to formally "restore" that image file from E to the new larger drive.

I'm not sure why C is shown in RED. That may be a problem? My guess is that C is red because it is almost completely full.

You have a "System Reserved" folder on your G drive. The main purpose of "System Reserved" is to hold the boot files, so they are probably in there (you can look). If so, maybe all you need to do is change "System Reserved" on that drive to be the active partition (in diskmgmt.msc). When there are multiple drives with active partitions, normally the first one will be used to boot from.

edit: Sorry, G was a typo, I meant H. If you make the "System Reserved" partition active on H, it should boot.

spankyham said:

Ok thank you,
I shall try that and let you know what happens.
I got around the error by starting the 'Volume shadows copy' service.


okay so its completed, i set it to put the file onto the h drive though, will that be an issue? and what should i do next
thanks again for helping

Why did you choose H when the instructions were to use E?