Vista delete, XP and Linux move, and Windows 7 moved and or increased

[jim4b]

I have a 500 GB hard drive from 3-2009 with Vista on primary 1 at 65 GB, XP Pro on the 2ND at 30 GB, and 7 is installed on my 3rd primary at 75 GB, and in the extended partition area are 2 Ubuntu Linux, swap file, and a couple of NTFS storage partitions which uses the remaining drive space. So I want to delete the old Vista and then either move 7 to that primary 1 after a temporary shrink to fit the 65 GB, or install Windows 10 on it, and then delete the 2 NTFS partitions and an older Linux to allow reducing the extended way down for more space for 7 if it is possible to move or copy partitions such as my XP and a Linux with a good partion tool such as the Gparted or Acronis Disk Manager. My NTFS storage areas are now empty so not needed, and I did create a exact full hard drive clone copy with Acronis True Image in a external enclosure connected by eSATA and my system does have the AHCI sata to allow hot connect. So any good suggestions for this?

 

[Megahertz07]

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs.

Is your disk a Legacy-MBR or UEFI-GPT?
As you have 4 OS (Vista, XP, 7, Ubuntu), to witch one MBR is pointing to be the Master boot record? Is it Grub on the Ubuntu?

As you have already cloned the disk, my suggestion is to delete all partitions on the original disk and then create new ones, and with Acronis True Image recover not the disk, but partitions one by one. It wont boot. With Win 7 Installation disk do a boot repair, and with Easy BCD make the other boot options.

 

[mrjimphelps]

Make sure you back up your drive before doing anything.

I would do several backups:
* A sector-by-sector (clone) backup of the whole drive.
* An image backup of each partition.

I would also consider purchasing a new hard drive, restoring the backup(s) to the new drive, and then putting the current drive in storage after you back it up.

 

[jim4b]

This old 2009 store built computer is the old MBR style. When I did the Acronis clone it only allowed me to do the whole hard drive not each separate partition.

 

[Megahertz07]

I have Acronis True Image Home 2014 and it allow me to restore partitions. Are you sure yours can't do it?

 

[jim4b]

Okay now I have deleted empty unneeded partitions, and removed the Vista, and I used the most recent version of the Linux based GParted partition editor to do resize, move, and even copy and paste to a newly created partition so that I do have 7 on the first primary with XP and a NTFS empty but ready primaries. So the main issue now is that the partition numbers are not in disk order. Such as my third primary is #4 with the XP on it, should be #3, which is taken by the extended that needs to be #4. There is a Linux based tool called Test Disk which I may use to attempt to correct the partition table on the MBR so they are in order.