Cloning Boot Drive to Larger HDD

gdmaclew

Distinguished Member
I have the following setup...

Drive 1 - 500GB HDD Primary Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit
Drive 2 - 1TB HDD Secondary Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit
Drive 3 - 500 GB SSD Win10 Pro version 1803
Drive 4 - 500 GB HDD Win10 original release (2015)

Drive 5 - 256GB SSD data drive - for data transfers only

Drive 6 - 1TB WD My Passport External USB 3 HDD - for nightly backups
Drive 7 - 2TB WD My Passport External USB 3 HDD - for nightly backups

Drives 1 thru 4 are bootable and are referenced in the Easy BCD boot tables which reside on Drive 1.

I wish to clone and replace drive 1 with a 2TB HDD.

Here's what I think should be the correct procedure...

Boot from Drive 1. (500GB Win7)
Delete all entries in Easy BCD tables.
Power down.
Disconnect drive power cables for drives 2, 3 & 4
Disconnect data and power cables for drive 5.
Connect new 2TB HDD to drive 5 cables.
Boot directly into drive 1 from BIOS.
Clone drive 1 to new 2TB drive.
When cloning is complete, disconnect 500GB drive 1 and connect new 2TB HDD to drive 1 cables (power and data).
Reconnect drives 1 thru 3 power cables and drive 5 power and data cables.
Boot using new 2TB HDD.
Run Easy BCD and renter the 4 previous boot entries for drives 1 thru 4.
Reboot and check for proper booting using Easy BCD.

Sound about right?


Doug
 

Attachments

  • Bootloader Settings.jpg
    Bootloader Settings.jpg
    140.5 KB · Views: 3
NO !

There are no "EasyBCD tables"
That's MS bootmgr's BCD.
EasyBCD just helps you manage its contents.
Remove the entries and you remove the way Windows boots, there's no "directly from BIOS" option.
Clone your disk 1 to your new drive, then try booting from it without changing anything about your setup first.
Depending on what brand of Partition Manager you use, and which of its copying commands you choose, that might be all you need to do.
If not, post back and we'll advise on what to do next to fix the boot on the new drive.
 
Hi Terry.
Sorry, I meant the BCD entries.
I will probably use Acronis True Image 2017. I am licensed.

Why I went was considering going thru the process of deleting all the entries was that I was concerned about the new drive having a "signature" different from the current and if I cloned it, the boot process would not be able to find the new drive.

Am I way off base here?

The other reason I usually like to disconnect all drives except the Source and Target is it prevents picking the wrong drive for either. Just a personal preference).

Thanks
 
That's why I qualified my answer. Some PM software will copy an OS and automatically correct the BCD for the change of disk signature. Some will make a true clone which will obviously contain an incorrect signature for the new h/w on which it now resides and will require a subsequent BCD repair. I don't have a database of which PM/command combinations do what. hence the suck it and see response.

As to your last point, I always advise use of the disk label. It's especially relevant and important when installing a new OS.
I've lost count of the times when people have posted here something like "Help ! I just installed xxx to my D disk and now my Windows C disk has gone and I've lost ten years of my data"

Windows disk letters aren't "real". When your PC is off, none of the devices/partitions have any kind of letter id. Only when you boot a copy of Windows, does it assign virtual labels in the form of letters which it maps in its registry, not on the device. Every Windows OS in a multi-boot has its own registry map, and there doesn't have to be even the vaguest similarity between them. In practice, they will probably be similar because the assignation of letters is determined
a) by any letter you have assigned using Disk Management to fix a letter to a device (i.e. the registry remembers your choice between boots) or
b) by the order in which the devices are discovered during POST (which remains similar between OSs)

The exception of course is the convention that the booting Windows will normally call itself C, so the other devices will be assigned to sequentially following letters as they are detected.

That's where the "Help! ..." request comes in.
The installation CD/DVD is booted (normally) and as such is an OS in its own right, with its own registry map, and hence relying on letters to identify the space you have reserved for your new OS is fraught with danger.
The DVD thinks of itself as C and gives your normal OS a different letter, likewise the space you allocated for your new OS, so thinking you can identify them by letter will likely cause tears before bedtime.

The safe option when formatting a new HDD for a prospective OS is to use the "volume label" field in the format comand. This actually writes a physical label in the partition table of the MBR on the disk, which is visible to any OS, Windows or otherwise.

No chance of "picking the wrong drive" during critical data movement and it's also pretty handy during day to day use, since Explorer also will use it if present. My C and D drives switch depending on whether W7 or W10 is booted, but there's never a doubt about which is which.
exp.JPG

You can add/change labels at any time by a simple right click/rename in Explorer
 
I started using the Label "function" a few years ago and haven't done a cloning since then, so I didn't realize that I had given myself
some insurance against picking the wrong drive.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. It is very helpful.

As for the cloning software, I also have AEOMEI Partition Assistant and Samsung Magician (although I believe this is optimized for SSDs) and MiniTool Partition Wizard v11.

I could first try Acronis (which I am most familiar with) and watch the result. If it changes the signature I can start the process again with AEOMEI and see or, if the BCD changes are not too time-consuming I could do that (if you could enlighten me as to the steps to take).

Doug
 
Just clone the disk and point the BIOS at it.
If it doesn't boot and look just like your previous system (with the obvious differences) then point the BIOS back at the original, boot it and run EasyBCD.
IN EasyBCD > file > select BCD store
select your new drive, delete the entry for itself, and add it again (point at the letter which Explorer sees your new drive by, not what you expect it to be when it's booted).
When you try booting it again, everything should work just as before.
Nothing about the uncloned systems has changed so their entries in the cloned BCD should be fine.
 
Success!

I followed your instructions and it worked smoothly.
I disconnected both cables from my Data Drive SSD and plugged them into the new drive.
I booted from my Acronis CD and ran the clone utility and shut down.

I moved the data cable from the old Primary Win7 drive and connected it to the new drive.
I then reattached my Data drive.

I rebooted and set the new drive as the first boot drive in the BIOS and then saved and rebooted.

It booted fine with the same BCD entries as before.
As soon as the Desktop came up it displayed a dialog box saying "You must restart your computer to apply these changes".
I rebooted again and everything looked normal (except for the increased size of the Primary Win7 drive.

Thanks for your help.
It will come in handy when I go from my Win10 500GB SSD to a larger 1TB SSD next year when I switch over to Win10.

Cheers.
 

Attachments

  • Post 2TB Drive labels.jpg
    Post 2TB Drive labels.jpg
    218 KB · Views: 3
  • Disk Management after 3rd Reboot with 2TB HDD.jpg
    Disk Management after 3rd Reboot with 2TB HDD.jpg
    450.9 KB · Views: 3
Back
Top