# [SOLVED] Cloning Windows 7 drive



## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

I have Windows 7 Pro sp1 currently installed on a Western Digital 160GB IDE Drive. Obviously this is a pretty slow drive when compared with the option of going SATAII. I'd rather not reinstall Windows since that is a pain so I'm looking at the option of cloning.

I have a Western Digital 200GB SATAII drive and I want to clone the partition from the 160 GB IDE to the 200GB SATA, then format & get rid of the IDE. My questions are;

Will Norton Ghost 14 do the trick? If so will I need to use BCD to fix the bootup on the new cloned drive? Norton has enough of my money and I'd rather not buy another version.

Haven't done this since XP so I'm really foggy on the details of how to do this again and what may have changed with Windows 7 regarding cloning the OS.


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*

Hi - 

Windows 7 has on-board imaging -

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-a-system-image

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Back-up-your-programs-system-settings-and-files

Regards. . .

jcgriff2

`


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## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*

@ gcgriff

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure you understand what it is I'm trying to do. Allow me to explain more clearly.

I have Win 7 Pro on C:\ <IDE>

I want to move Windows 7 from IDE drive to SATA drive so that I can remove and discard the old IDE and then boot from the newer SATA. My system specs at as follows;

OS:
Windows 7 Professional OEM copy Valid/Legit no pirate crap

Hardware:
AMD Athlon X2 +4200
Asus M2N-E SLI Mobo
Geforce 460 GTX
2GB Corsair Dual Channel Ram
Windows System -160GB IDE HDD <---Trying to replace with 200GB SATA
200GB Internal SATA HDD


It is my understanding that Windows 7 imaging does not support the copying of the OS from one drive to another, just the data. I will not reinstall windows and then 'migrate' my settings over because it's simply too tedious and time consuming and doesn't transfer everything.

I've since tried it with Norton Ghost 15, I was told it will work flawlessly. I was misinformed apparently or I've done something wrong because after my attempt the copy process said it was successful. I pulled the old IDE drive out and booted from the new copied SATA drive. I can get as far as the login screen. After I type in my password the computer takes about 2 minutes then says 'Preparing Desktop' and from there goes to an empty basic blue desktop and the 'This copy is not Genuine' watermark with no icons anywhere and no explorer.exe running. If I try to manually run explorer.exe from TaskMan I can get it to run but it then says its loading me into a 'temporary profile' and from there I can't do anything at all except shutdown or log off. It won't even allow me to re-validate or connect to internet. This IS a genuine and valid copy of windows and it's my understanding my license allows me to change the Harddisk without having to buy a new copy of windows as long as I'm ONLY running it on the machine I installed it on, which I am. Only change is the hard disk.

Please help! If I left out any important information let me know and I'll fill it in.


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## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*

I've since discovered that the new SATA drive that I've copied windows too is assigned as D: instead of C:. I believe this is the problem. However after formatting and trying again I've discovered that there is no way to copy from the old C: to the new drive which is currently d: and make the new drive C at the same time. Seems to be a flaw with ghost.

Any ideas?


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## i MaRk i (Dec 29, 2009)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*

Hi-

I had a similar experience with the non-genuine and wrong drive letters.

You can do two things: (Second one will probably be easier)

You can either place both drives in the computer and then edit the registry offline as noted here: http://www.techsupportforum.com/f217/solved-changing-drive-letters-from-a-different-os-472867.html
~~~~~~
Or you can use the windows 7 boot cd and use "BCDedit" to change the location of the OS. you will have to run the following from cmd:

```
bcdedit /set {current} Device partition=D:
```
Regards,

Mark


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## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*

Yeah that won't do...My current config has C:\ as my boot drive E: & F: are optical drives and G: H: are my external drives. I want this to be the case when I'm booting from the new SATA. Booting from D: will mess up everything I have setup in my home network<Dont want to get into that>. 

I want to clone windows from c:\ IDE drive to the new SATA which should be the new C:. Ghost isn't allowing me to pick the drive letter of the cloned drive, it automatically assigns it as D:. I'm now back at square one running my rig from the original IDE and can't seem to figure out how to get this cloning thing to work.


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## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*

Does anybody have any idea how to do this correctly?


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## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

*Re: Cloning Windows 7 drive*



jcgriff2 said:


> Hi -
> 
> Windows 7 has on-board imaging -
> 
> ...


My apologies jcgriff2, after talking with a knowledgeable person like yourself at length face to face, it became clear that you had the right idea from the start. ray: :wink:

I thank you for the information as it helped me determine that the onboard imagining system in Windows 7 is in fact capable of cloning the system drive quite easily and rather quickly. Took me about an hour from start to finish. I'm up and running on my new SATA II drive and the computer is smoother. 

Now I can let my kid take the old IDE apart.

Cheers!


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## jcgriff2 (Sep 30, 2007)

Hi - 

Glad you got new HDD and was able to use Windows 7 imaging.

Thank you for posting back with the outcome.

Good Luck to you.

jcgriff2

`


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## premsparky (Dec 3, 2010)

I have had the same problem cloning windows 7 64 bit to HDD and found the following solution:
boot until you see preparing desktop and Hit Ctrl Alt Delete and open task manager. then go to file, new task and run regedit. 
navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\MountedDevices and delete all drives labelled with any letters AFTER "C" (just leaving "C" drive)
Reboot and all is now well! 
Hope this helps!:smile:


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## Wuzr 7 (Dec 3, 2010)

I suggest you try Hiren's Boot cd it has a version of Symantec ghost on it and you can just copy one disk over to the other making the SATA and exact duplicate of the IDE drive. You can download the disk ISO at:
[url]http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download.html?start=8[/URL]


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## Eremon1 (Jan 8, 2009)

No need for any of those solutions as long as you properly follow the instructions in the Imaging for Windows in 'Backup and Restore' from the Control Panel. Here's how I did it;

From control panel click 'backup and restore' then click 'Create a System Image' on the lefthand side of screen. Pick location to save system image to and let it do it's thing. Shouldn't take more than half an hour to 1 hour. Then you'll be given the option to create a 'System Recovery disc' if you don't already have the Windows 7 disc. This is to boot your system outside of your Windows installation so that you may restore the backup image to a different hard drive. Remove old system drive, but keep new system drive connected. Boot from Windows Setup disc or Recovery disc and get to 'Repair your Computer', then click 'restore from image file' and pick the location to restore it to. Reboot once finished and you should now be ready to boot from the new system drive. Remove any CDs from drives before reboot. You may have to adjust the boot order for your devices in the BIOS in order to boot from new/different system drive.

This worked for me on Windows 7 Pro 32bit and I've now done it successfully to my main system that has Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. No more IDE hard drives for me!


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