How to Clone a Windows 7 Partition to a new Hard Drive?

[mjf]

If your spinning HDD is coincidentally aligned as most of mine appear to be then Windows Imaging should be fine. If not I would have thought Windows would rigidly follow the original partition structure. I don't think the article referred to by karlsnooks specially refers to the reimaging behavior of Windows. If you clean install to an SSD then Windows will do correct alignment.

I decided to prepare my SSD and use the Macrium drag & drop image method to retain the prepared alignment. After that I use my primary imaging tool - Windows inbuilt imaging.

Add: If space on the SSD is tight you can reduce the size of your pagefile and disable hibernation if not required. Have a look here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1133897/windows-7-ssd-tweaking-guide

 

[karlsnooks]

chobo,
Does this computer belong to you or to your company?

 

[chobo2]

chobo,
Does this computer belong to you or to your company?

It is mine.

 

[karlsnooks]

excellent. am grabbing a bite to eat and shall return. thanks

 

[chobo2]

excellent. am grabbing a bite to eat and shall return. thanks

Ok. I will will let you guys know when I try to do the steps "Kaktussoft" recommended to do.

 

[mjf]

I just saw your screenshot. Disk 0 is a bit of a mess. But you say your disk 1 is the SSD. If you disconnect disk 0 and the SSD boots then you you just need to check that it is aligned.
As for 2 Windows OSs on 2 separate partitions then
1) with one license I don't think it is legal to have an OS on disk 0 and disk 1 if that is your intention.
2) Using 2 OSs as a means of separating work seems a bit odd. Just cleanly separate work and personal data with one OS!

 

[whs]

I just saw your screenshot. Disk 0 is a bit of a mess. But you say your disk 1 is the SSD. If you disconnect disk 0 and the SSD boots then you you just need to check that it is aligned.
As for 2 Windows OSs on 2 separate partitions then
1) with one license I don't think it is legal to have an OS on disk 0 and disk 1 if that is your intention.
2) Using 2 OSs as a means of separating work seems a bit odd. Just cleanly separate work and personal data with one OS!

Did you see on Disk0 that there is an active logical partition. That is odd. I wonder how that came about.

 

[mjf]

I just saw your screenshot. Disk 0 is a bit of a mess. But you say your disk 1 is the SSD. If you disconnect disk 0 and the SSD boots then you you just need to check that it is aligned.
As for 2 Windows OSs on 2 separate partitions then
1) with one license I don't think it is legal to have an OS on disk 0 and disk 1 if that is your intention.
2) Using 2 OSs as a means of separating work seems a bit odd. Just cleanly separate work and personal data with one OS!

Did you see on Disk0 that there is an active logical partition. That is odd. I wonder how that came about.

That's interesting. Maybe the OP can answer. I gather that this was an OS drive but I always thought the active partition had to be primary. If you have a logical Boot (OS) partition then I thought you needed an active system reserved primary. That is, the boot files had to be on a primary partition.

 

[whs]

You are right Michael. That was my understanding too.

 

[chobo2]

Ok.

After re-copying the partition and then using windows 7 repair it seems I can log into my "work partition" so what is the verdict with the realigning the thing?

 

[whs]

Are you sure it is an alignment problem. When you do a fresh install of Windows 7, the installer does align the partitions. See in the VERIFICATION section of my tutorial how to check the alignment. If you have a 100MB system partition, only that has to be aligned, the rest follows.

If there is an alignment problem, you can apply this fix: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/205905-ssd-fix-misalignment.html

 

[chobo2]

Are you sure it is an alignment problem. When you do a fresh install of Windows 7, the installer does align the partitions. See in the VERIFICATION section of my tutorial how to check the alignment. If you have a 100MB system partition, only that has to be aligned, the rest follows.

If there is an alignment problem, you can apply this fix: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/205905-ssd-fix-misalignment.html

This is what I get. From my understanding it is good

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 58 GB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 58 GB

 

[chobo2]

I ran the windows experience but it seems to still show my ssd partitions in windows defragger.

 

[whs]

Are you sure it is an alignment problem. When you do a fresh install of Windows 7, the installer does align the partitions. See in the VERIFICATION section of my tutorial how to check the alignment. If you have a 100MB system partition, only that has to be aligned, the rest follows.

If there is an alignment problem, you can apply this fix: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/205905-ssd-fix-misalignment.html

This is what I get. From my understanding it is good

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 58 GB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Primary 99 GB 58 GB

Perfect.

 

[mjf]

ditto.
In Disk Defragmenter > Configure schedule > select disks
Your SSD partitions should not appear. Then you are ok.

 

[karlsnooks]

chobo,

All programs should be installed to your C drive, regardless of work or personal. Just simply forget that designation.

From the disk management, you are presently booting from your SSD which contains the C drive.

Do not worry about alignment. Win 7 has correctly aligned the partitions on your SSD.

Do not worry about defrag. You can defrag an SSD. I do NOT recommend such, but you can do it.

Did you read the tutorial to which I linked which explained relocating your profile folders? On my system, I've relocated Documents, Music, Videos and Pictures to my D which is also a partition on my SSD.

Partitions, fractionalized like you have done on your hard drive is a hang over from the XP days.

 

[swbca]

There is a Performance Issue when tranferring Image from SSD to Disk too.

I had finished an all new-install on a new Thinkpad T410s with an SSD drive. But the screen resolution on this notebook was too high for my eyes so I gave it to my wife. I moved the SSD image to another Thinkpad with a standared SATA drive and the disk performance was terrible. Using a stop watch, the computer took twice a long to boot and twice as long to load any program compared to this or any other Thinkpads with standard SATA or IDE disks.

 

[chobo2]

chobo,

All programs should be installed to your C drive, regardless of work or personal. Just simply forget that designation.

From the disk management, you are presently booting from your SSD which contains the C drive.

Do not worry about alignment. Win 7 has correctly aligned the partitions on your SSD.

Do not worry about defrag. You can defrag an SSD. I do NOT recommend such, but you can do it.

Did you read the tutorial to which I linked which explained relocating your profile folders? On my system, I've relocated Documents, Music, Videos and Pictures to my D which is also a partition on my SSD.

Partitions, fractionalized like you have done on your hard drive is a hang over from the XP days.

Sorry can your re-link to that tutorial. So what your saying is you have one profile for both partitions?

 

[karlsnooks]

See post #33