Installed SSD. Move "System Reserved" to SSD and make SSD boot?

[FuturDreamz]

Installed SSD. Move "System Reserved" to SSD and make SSD boot?

Hello. I recently installed a SSD into my setup. I didn't have a Win7 64bit disk, so I booted into the HDD's OS and installed via .iso (I didn't want to burn it, as that always seems to fail.

I wanted to get the System Restore partition installed on the SSD, so I tried booting to a Win 32bit disk and formatting the drive that way. Problem is, the System Restore is not recognized as such, and was visible so I ended up deleting it

that works fine, except I now have this:

Disk0: Hard drive
Disk1: SSD
Disk2: Irrelevant

1. Can I move the System Restore Partition to the SSD?
2. How can I make this boot off of the SSD? It currently boots off of the System restore on the HDD
3. The drive letters are screwed up, but whenever I try to change the SSD's drive letter it says "the parameter is incorrect", no matter which drive letter I choose.

Help? thanks.

 

[whs]

I am not exactly sure what you did here. I suggest you restart and do those steps

1. On your Disk0 HDD, move the bootmgr from the 100MB partition to C:. You can do that with EasyBCD. The instructions are here. You take the option "Change the boot drive". That way we'll get the 100MB partition out of the way.

2. Make an image of your C partition (which is now the active partition). Take free Macrium or free Paragon for that task - but NOT Windows7 imaging.

3. Delete everything on your SSD (with Disk Management or the bootable CD of Partition Wizard) so that the whole SSD is unallocated space. You can also use Secure Erase if you want to cleanup the Nands.

4 Define an aligned, active partition on the SSD. Instructions are here.

5. Restore your image from C: into that partition.

6. Change the bootorder in the BIOS to boot from the SSD and you should be on your way.

 

[FuturDreamz]

that'd work, if it wasn't for the fact that My HDD has over 250GB of data and my SSD only holds 60GB, and I wanted to do a clean install.

 

[whs]

But that is easy. You first move everything that does not belong to the system (all your user files) to an external drive. Then you image C - use free Paragon because that can restore a larger partition into a smaller partition (SSD). After you got your systemon the SSD going, dlete the C partition and make a data partition of the unallocated space.

On this data partition you make folders for Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos and move your data from the external disk into the folders where they belong. Then you right click on those folders and INCLUDE them into the corresponding library.

Should you have large games installed that do not fit on the SSD, you have to first uninstall them and then reinstall from the SSD system directing the installers to a folder on the HDD.

But if you really want to make a clean install, clear the SSD so that you have unallocated space. Then unplug both HDDs and install on the SSD. That is more work because you start way back with your system.

 

[gregrocker]

Burn the ISO to disk using ImgBurn at 4x speed - everyone else can do it fine so there's no reason to be afraid of it. Then boot the DVD to clean install so that Win7 is seen correctly as C when booted into it and not E. Clean Install Windows 7

Unplug the other HD's during install so they do not interfere. After install plug them back in to delete the old OS or if needed boot it using one-time BIOS Boot Menu key.

If you're interested in moving beyond fear of burning a DVD to get a perfect reinstall of Win7, follow these steps: Reinstalling Windows 7

 

[FuturDreamz]

Actually I did end up burning it. I was surprised because it only took five minutes - my Mac took 45 minutes or so.
And it took me less time to reinstall everything then it took last time.