General partioning & OS migration questions

Hi,

In the old days, I seem to remember doing a basic 'copy the current os partition to a new hard drive' procedure, to be much easier. but in windows 7, I always seem to be doing something wrong.

What is it that I don't understand about win7 in general that makes this difficult for me, or maybe is just something about hard drives as a whole.

I've been doing installations with win7 since Oct/09 at the release, and each time I've done an install, maybe 10/20 different occasions, each one has shown me a subtle difference and I really just wanna get the facts straight.

If I have just a basic standard install partition setup, why can't I just copy it to a new drive, then re-purpose the old drive? or is it that easy for everyone else, and I'm just crazy.

Some installations make use of a smaller partition ahead of the main, that stores.. something, not sure what. where as others seem to be one solid partition.

My main objective in most installs, is to have the bios boot from the new drive it's self, and not be reliant on the older drives master boot record?

right now, I have a 320gb hd, that I'm trying to migrate to a smaller 80gb drive. I run across this scenario a lot with new computer purchases, b/c the new comp comes with a big-fancy drive that should really be used for storage, but the os drive was purchased separately, thus a migration of the os is kinda the next step for me.

I'd like a workflow for the above, b/c otherwise I end up doing a clean install on the new drive, which isn't always a bad thing, but some times I dont WANT to reinstall drivers, etc.

If I were to just copy the entire 320gb drive, and move it over to the 80gb, then try to boot from the new clone, I'd end up with a: no boot device available msg

Been using EASEUS Partition Master 4, as my main tool.

I miss the days of EIDE, when you could just copy the old install, swap the cables, and said ta-da. again, my issues might have something to do with the whole sata evolution b/c it really doesnt seem to matter if I swap the cable positions any more, right?

so what is it that I'm so blind to in doing this most simplistic of tasks?

Thanks,
Dev.

I would use free Partition Wizard bootable CD, as it is the best tool we've found for Win7 partition management.

The exception would be to Shrink Volume which I would attempt first in W7 Disk Management which will not fail, whereas 3rd party partition managers can fail, although we've not had PW fail on Resizing yet.

You want to shrink Win7 so it will fit comfortably on the new HD, then rightclick the partition from booted PW disk to Copy it to new HD which you have also plugged in.

This will likely still require recovering the MBR into Win7. After copying unplug the old HD, boot the Win7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD, click through to Recovery Tools list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots until Win7 starts on new HD.

Some cloning software will allow you to copy over with the MBR intact so it starts without this recovery. Often it is included in the purchase of a new HD, so you might check the model's Support Downloads webpage or the literature with your HD.

Save also a Win7 Backup image externally as it should work to reimage the HD if cloning doesn't, or vice versa.

The complication with your dual boot reimaging was likely the dual boot itself. You most likely needed to mark Win7 active to repair its MBR and start it up, then add XP back to Dual boot using EasyBCD 2.0 from Win7. XP almost always holds the MBR so Win7 can't be repaired until MBR is recovered back into it by marking Active and running Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots. Sorry we weren't able to help you with that in real time.

Normally XP requires a Repair Install from boot when changing hardware - especially with mobo change.

If you were able to tell the imaging app to preserve the MBR it might only be for the OS which holds it, which is normally XP in such a dual boot. If it looked for an MBR on Win7 it wouldn't find it because it was on the XP System partition.

That said, the best dual boot config for separate HD's is to not interlock the HD's using a Windows-managed Dual Boot, but instead recover the MBR into Win7 and have either OS boot independently via BIOS boot order or one-time Boot Menu key. This leaves them to come and go as you please.