How do I copy the entire contents of boot drive?

[Melor]

I have been having issues with the booting of my c drive. I just installed a fresh copy of Win7 64 onto a fresh hard drive and it is booting. What I want to do is copy over the entire contents of my original C drive over to the new drive. I have a second computer to do this on and am not sure how to do it. I doubt that dragging and dropping will copy all the hidden and system files, which is what I want to do.

The reason I don't want to simply make an image of the first drive and restore that is that the original drive does not boot AND contains a system partition that I don't want to bring along. I am hoping to marry the bootability of the new drive with the files and information on the original drive.

Any advice?

Paul

 

[Corazon]

Why not image your C: partition, but ignore the small system partition? Then restore that image to the partition holding your newly installed Windows system, overwriting it.

The new system partition will remain in place and not be touched by the image restore. You'll probably end up with a non-booting system again, but circumstances will be completely different and you have a much better chance of successfully using the Startup Repair.

Basically it'll just be a matter of "re-detecting" the Windows system and creating a new boot entry for it.

(I actually used precisely this same method - successfully - to manually align my system partition when I was cloning it from HDD to a new SSD.)

 

[Melor]

Why not image your C: partition, but ignore the small system partition? Then restore that image to the partition holding your newly installed Windows system, overwriting it.

The new system partition will remain in place and not be touched by the image restore. You'll probably end up with a non-booting system again, but circumstances will be completely different and you have a much better chance of successfully using the Startup Repair.

Basically it'll just be a matter of "re-detecting" the Windows system and creating a new boot entry for it.

(I actually used precisely this same method - successfully - to manually align my system partition when I was cloning it from HDD to a new SSD.)

I am up for this. What software do you recommend for imaging the old C drive? The software I used before grabbed the entire drive including the unwanted partition.

Once I get this up and running on my "new" c drive, I will then be restoring it to my old physical C drive which is a SSD. What a pain in the butt this has been and I am not even through. I am not opposed to buying software to make the move as I will need to do this twice to get it back on the SSD.

Paul

 

[Corazon]

The free edition of Macrium Reflect is a favorite around here, and definitely won't backup or restore any other partitions besides what you tell it to. It'll do the job very nicely.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

 

[Melor]

Downloaded and made the image last night. Will try the restore after work today. Thanks for your help.

Paul

 

[Corazon]

You're very welcome. Please keep us posted on your progress; if any new issues crop up we'll be glad to help you along.

 

[Melor]

I got home too late last night to work on my project, so I started tonight.

As mentioned before, I did a fresh installation of Win7x64 on a hard drive. It booted fine. I used reflect to take my crapped out Win7x64 installation onto the bootable fresh installation. In the advanced options in reflect, I opted NOT to replace the MBR as I knew the MBR was bad on the crapped out Win7x64 installation. It wouldn't boot, but I was expecting this.

I entered the windows recovery environment, opened a DOS window and went to c:\boot and renamed the BCR to BCR.old, ran Bootrec /rebuildBCD

Crossed my fingers and it now gives me an error saying that pwnative is missing, skipping and autocheck is missing, skipping then it bluescreens and reboots.

Any suggestions? I am at a loss as to where to go now.

If the machine boots on a fresh copy of Win7, is it possible to simply copy over all the system files/folders, etc from the non-booting drive? I have a second machine to do this on, so I am not trying to do this on the non-booting box.


Any help is appreciated, and I will reward anyone who is able to help me resolve this issue.

Paul

 

[Corazon]

Hmm. You should probably simply have run the automatic startup repair 3 times before just rebuilding the BCD store. That may well have broken things, not fixed them.

Just to avoid any misunderstandings: you have only one harddisk (the new one) in the computer, correct? Or did you add the new disk to the existing one and both are in the computer now?

 

[Melor]

The computer I am trying to fix has four hds. I have disconnected all but the boot drive. Before the computer failed I hav the system on drive c, ( a ssd of only 150 mb ) and program files on both the c an d drives. The other two drives were only data.

During my efforts to rebuild I have pulled the ssd and have been imaging the ssd to a spare 500 gb hd so as not to kill the data on the ssd while playing around trying to fix.


Paul

 

[Britton30]

I'm confused. If you had a fresh clean install, why not just copy your user files from the "bad" drive? you'd have no need for hidden and system files since they should be in the new install. You will still have to reinstall your software.

 

[Melor]

I'm confused. If you had a fresh clean install, why not just copy your user files from the "bad" drive? you'd have no need for hidden and system files since they should be in the new install. You will still have to reinstall your software.

This what I am trying next. I am going to copy over the files,but have not yet decided what files to copy. Now that I have learned about the boot directory, that is not going to be copied but I think everything else.

Paul

 

[Melor]

Trying to copy my system information, setting, program files, etc. was a miserable failure. The program I was planning on using ( second copy ) fails to copy over system/program information due to security settings. I disabled UAC, fiddled with file and folder permissions and still was unable.

What I need to do is backup my boot disk and restore portions of it, or simply copy from one disk to another. The reflect program I used to make images is great at restoring the entire disk, but not individual directories, which is what I am after.

Any suggestions?

Paul

 

[CarvedDuck]

...is that the original drive does not boot AND contains a system partition that I don't want to bring along.

Is the "System Partition" a system recovery Partition. Both of my Acers have System Recovery Partitions. Using Macrium, make images of both partitions and then use the macrium recovery process on a CD or USB (if your system will boot to a USB) and place both of the Partitions on the new drive.

Even though the Windows partition will not boot on the new drive, you can use the recovery software to use the System Partition to rebuild a bootable windows.

I had to do that about 12 months back and it took about an hour and needed no special skills other than patience. On the Acer, I think I tapped F5 repeatedly during the initial start up for it to go into eRecovery and reinstate windows. I am using that computer as I type.

 

[flemur13013]

If the machine boots on a fresh copy of Win7, is it possible to simply copy over all the system files/folders, etc from the non-booting drive? I have a second machine to do this on, so I am not trying to do this on the non-booting box

That's exactly the method (brute force) I've used a couple of times:
- system fried
- install Win7
- boot from CD and delete all the files on C: w/explorer.
- copy all the files from the other disk (USB or whatever).
- reboot

It's a bit slower than necessary but dead reliable and NO extra software needed after booting from CD. "Reliable" is the most important thing for backups. Data files (mp3s, etc) are on a different partition, as they always should be, so they don't get copied.

I know a lot of people here like Macrium, but it caused me more problems than it solved (don't recall exactly what, it was a couple of years ago). And I see so many problems on this forum with Windows Backup/restore/whatever that are similar to what I saw with it that I'll never bother with that MS stuff again.

I use "drive image XML" (AKA dixml, tho most partition SW works too) to copy entire partitions (it can run while you work normally) and Vice-Versa pro for incremental backups; it's great because you can clearly see all the new or changed files after installing or removing programs - or if some suspicious file that just showed up. The backup is just a copy of the original C: drive, no funny formatting, no funny files and no funny procedures. (dixml also backs up to some sort of XML file, but I've never bothered with it).

 

[Melor]

I'm confused. If you had a fresh clean install, why not just copy your user files from the "bad" drive? you'd have no need for hidden and system files since they should be in the new install. You will still have to reinstall your software.

What I'm DESPERATELY trying to do is prevent the need for a software reinstalletion I just discovered the file/folder backup and restore on the Macrium software. I am going to give that a try next.

Paul

.

 

[whs]

It looks like you are in trouble because you forgot to image and restore the 100MB hidden active partition. At least that is how it looks from here.

 

[Melor]

It looks like you are in trouble because you forgot to image and restore the 100MB hidden active partition. At least that is how it looks from here.

That was an early concern of mine, but I found the fresh install of win7 resides on a single partition without the 100mb hidden partition. My conclusion is that the 100 mb partition is not needed.

Paul

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I found the fresh install of win7 resides on a single partition without the 100mb hidden partition. My conclusion is that the 100 mb partition is not needed.

Paul

You don't need it, but you need the boot files it contains.

As you discovered, it is possible to install without creating that 100mb partition. In that case, those boot files are instead on C.

But if your install includes a 100 MB partition, I think you should image it if you use an imaging application at all.

 

[Corazon]

That was an early concern of mine, but I found the fresh install of win7 resides on a single partition without the 100mb hidden partition. My conclusion is that the 100 mb partition is not needed.

Oi...it would've been good to know that before. My plan was built on the assumption that you did have the separate boot partition. Now I'm not surprised it failed. :/

Maybe you could fresh-install Windows 7 yet again and go for another attempt at replacing it with your old system, and this time really leaving the boot files alone.

You'd have to either completely wipe the SSD and leave no partitions on it, so the install will automatically create the 100MB boot partition, or partition it manually to have the 100MB and another partition for Windows itself, then set the 100MB partition as active and proceed with the install, choosing the larger partition as your destination to install Windows into.

 

[whs]

But if your install includes a 100 MB partition, I think you should image it if you use an imaging application at all.

Not only "should" but "must". Else you are constantly trying to repair the bootmgr - which does not always work as designed.