Cloning win7 to new sdd for dual boot

Please post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums so we can see what the problem is. If you tried to create too many Primary partitions did you ignore the warning it was converting to Dynamic? You can only have four Primary Partitions, or three Primary and unlimited Logical.

Only your first OS install needs to be Primary so it can be marked Active to boot.

I am not familar with Easeus Drive Copy although the Partition Manager does fail a lot losing data so it is not recommended here. Is that an imaging or cloning suite? Make sure you are using unformatted partitions to clone or apply image onto. If disk has converted to Dynamic use Easeus to convert it back to Basic after removing formatting from target partitions.

gregrocker said:

Please post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums so we can see what the problem is. If you tried to create too many Primary partitions did you ignore the warning it was converting to Dynamic? You can only have four Primary Partitions, or three Primary and unlimited Logical.

Only your first OS install needs to be Primary so it can be marked Active to boot.

I am not familar with Easeus Drive Copy although the Partition Manager does fail a lot losing data so it is not recommended here. Is that an imaging or cloning suite? Make sure you are using unformatted partitions to clone or apply image onto. If disk has converted to Dynamic use Easeus to convert it back to Basic after removing formatting from target partitions.

Yes, I believe I missed a warning about converting to Dynamic and that's when all my problems began. In any event my problem is now solved. I used Partition Master to convert dynamic disk to basic. That disk then began to boot in all OS's like normal but since I already started this project fresh onto a second SDD, I kept going.

To Recap:
1) Started with empty 500GB SDD and installed clean fresh Win7 32bit. Used a legit key for this install.
2) After install, I shrunk that partition to 80GB
3) Cloned Win7 64 bit from HDD to second SDD partition
4) Cloned Win7 64 bit from HDD to third SDD partition
5) Left last partition alone until I decide if I still need XP installed there or not.
6) Booted from windows repair disk and allowed it to detect os's. It worked like normal.
7) Rebooted and had all OS's listed in boot menu
8) Used EasyBCD to rename and rearrange items on boot menu
9) I'm a happy camper and now my super computer will be a pleasure to use in my daily work WITHOUT needing two laptops or 2 hdds. I can now boot into the OS I need, none of my programs or USB devices conflict with each other. Last step is to image the entire drive so I never have to go through this again.

Cheers to you all who helped out. Not only with this post but I found a lot of useful information all over this forum. I learned things I didn't know I wanted to learn. Have a great weekend!

Would you post back the requested screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums so we can check over the configuration for you. Even when all is working well about half the time we spot potential problems.

gregrocker said:

Would you post back the requested screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image - Windows 7 Help Forums so we can check over the configuration for you. Even when all is working well about half the time we spot potential problems.

Sorry for delay. Here is capture as requested. I see one is a logical drive while the rest are primary partitions. Will this be a problem ?

At some point when I have time, I'd like to resize these partitions to something more useful but I won't know what sizes will suit me until all programs are installed to their respective os's.

It would help to see the drive map so we know the layout, but from just the listings it appears correct.

Logical is always best for data partitions, since it cannot hijack the boot files as any preceding Primary partition can do during Repairs or Reinstall.

If you need help when the time comes for resizing, post back the full screenshot. Otherwise the tool which works best and never fails is free Partition Wizard Bootable CD Resize Partition - Video Help.