200 MB boot data on a different drive than windows

A couple weeks ago, I bought a new 1TB Caviar Black for my computer. I used HDClone to copy everything to the new drive then I reformatted the old one. Everything was working great. When I finally got around to installing the rc, stuff started getting weird. It turns out that it moved the windows data onto my older, slower drive and put the 200MB boot partition on my new drive. The computer works, but I would prefer if I could somehow move the windows partion onto the new drive and mod the 200MB partition to tell it to look there for the windows data.

Thanks,
xpansive

anyone?

When only having the 3rd sata drive intended for a second install of the 64bit RC here I managed to forget to unplug the 5th sata drive used strictly for storage. That while being after the intended destination was the one with an active partition.

The end result saw the mbr entries, boot folder along with boot files, and the BCD store on the wrong drive at the time. Time to unplug the storage was the fast realization on that one for the working install on the previous array set up.

After electing to split that up to see the 32bit RC go on the former Vista #4 drive I ended simply seeing a nice triple boot when plugging the rest in! one host all boot entries to simplify. The host being the default boot drive set in the bios.

Here is the photo of disk management:



when I tried to do a repair install is said there wasn`t enough room to copy the temporary files. This is obviously not true if you look at the photo above.

I also don`t think you can select a partition when you do a repair install and I don`t want to do a clean install because I have lots of important stuff.

Man you got yourself into quite a fix there!

Sorry but you need a few lessons on drive partitioning apparently! The upgrade can't work from the start since the first drive only sees 200mb usable drive space to begin with!

The second drive has a 201mb empty gap proceeding the current primary. That's a bit easier to see corrected however so don't panic on that. You are not going to like what you are going to need to see done to get things running normal again however.

First off with the second drive unplugged since you won't be setting up a dual boot but correcting a mess on drive #1 you will need to boot with a GParted live cd in order to nuke the 200mb on the first drive to see a brand new single primary or opt for a second storage partition if you intend to split that up at all.

For a single large primary you would format the new one while still booted in GParted to the NT File System in preparation for a new fresh install of 7 there. Once 7 is on and running you can then shutdown, replug drive #2 back in, and then proceed to copy all the files you want onto the new installation once the programs are on the new copy of Windows.

The last step is simply correcting the goof seen at the beginning of drive #2 with the 201mb gap seen there. The quick and easy fix? With all files now available on the first drive you can boot into GParted again in order to grow the exsting primary into that space which will and I repeat "will" take some time to see GParted copy sector by sector until complete.

That is mainly due to the system files already present on that drive at the beginning of the primary. Here the simple solution without worry of what files are left behind already having been backed up the solution would simply be nuking that one to see a new replacement with all drive available once it was formatted and ready for use.

Without taking these steps you will only defeating yourself there. If you simply go to unplug drive #1 and rebuild the BCD for drive #2 to make that bootable you still have the 201mb problem to resolve. If something goes bad during the resize... oops!

If nothing goes wrong with the resize and the first drive is left unplugged you could then proceed with the repair install seeing the new mbr and boot information placed on drive #2.

Do you know how long it takes to sit around and watch a partition being copied a piece at a time by any program? Simply growing the primary the 201mb and performing a repair install will go a lot faster seeing it all done on one drive.

The first thing you have to decide now besides dumping HD Clone is which drive do you will want Windows on as well as seeing that one made the default boot device in addition to correcting the partioning scheme. A separate 200mb boot partition for a single OS doesn't work as you've seen for yourself there.

The option is simply nuking the 200mb boot partition rather then expanding the 200mb on the intended out to full capacity and ending up with partition table problems. From there you see a clean install performed on the intended drive while not losing anything from the old one.

You can boot up from a GParted live cd and still copy partitions. In the long run however since there is no dual or multiple booting involved a good clean install on one large primary rather then splitting the drive for a separate boot partition will run into far fewer problems.