Move my OS to my new HDD

If you have the image on a 3rd external drive you could try booting up from the first drive still seeing 7 on it to try restoring the image to the new drive from there rather then booting live from the repair cd. Then you simply change the new drive to the default boot setting. There may be a problem with the repair cd itself.

aneslin85 said:

I tried this. When I boot in Repair Disk and try to do system image restore it gives me an error message, that says that HDD is in active mode. Without active mode. it wint boot. I spent 2 whole days to fix this. but I couldnt

I think we are going to have to see what is going on here.
Can you post a screenshot of the Disk Management Window?

• Expand the window so we can see the top and bottom sections and can read all the words
• We need to see both drives, new and old

I suspect that the problem is with the 100MB System Reserved partition, the ACTIVE partition flags, or a GPT format drive.

Did this desktop computer come with Windows 8 pre-installed?

frumbert said:

hmm, just jumping in here, but it sounds like the age old problem where microsoft haven't every gott around to making a way for a user to upgrade their hard drive, even though people (ime) have been asking for it since Windows 3.1. You have to BUY someone elses software in order to clone the drive and then extend the partition (although, yes extending partitions into free space can be done since XP, but not shrinking or resizing). It sounds like the "clone then reinstall" option doesn't work now, is that true?

Windows Vista Ultimate and Corporate to be followed by all editions of Windows 7 include the option for creating a full system image backup. There's an SF guide you can look over to see how to use it. Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

With that or downloading the free version of Acronis provided by WD or Seagate where they rebranded their's to Disk Wizard you don't have to buy anything. The backup option in 7 has been found quite reliable as well as simply downloading Acronis separately.

TVeblen said:

aneslin85 said:

I tried this. When I boot in Repair Disk and try to do system image restore it gives me an error message, that says that HDD is in active mode. Without active mode. it wint boot. I spent 2 whole days to fix this. but I couldnt

I think we are going to have to see what is going on here.
Can you post a screenshot of the Disk Management Window?

• Expand the window so we can see the top and bottom sections and can read all the words
• We need to see both drives, new and old

I suspect that the problem is with the 100MB System Reserved partition, the ACTIVE partition flags, or a GPT format drive.

Did this desktop computer come with Windows 8 pre-installed?

It came with 8 Home preinstalled and he upgraded to 8 Pro afterwards. Something probably foobarred during the clone however where something wasn't fully copied over or written properly. In fact the entire volume could be tainted from a bad clone and why a full image being restored usually goes much faster and reliably.

True that.

I am focusing on that "active partition" warning and thinking about that.

I also am thinking it could be the UEFI/GPT setup, where there is a hidden SYSTEM partition (not to be confused with the Windows System Reserved partition). I'm wondering if older versions of imaging programs can deal with that setup.

There you go! Acronis does it again!