Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Transfer Windows to Another Hard Disk

Each new version of Windows consumes something like four times that of its predecessor. (OK, to be fair, Windows 7 doesn't take up that much more room than Vista, but Vista's footprint was many times that of XP.) That kind of bloat would cause an uproar if the sizes of commercially available hard disks weren't growing at an even faster rate.

Luckily, a new drive is an inexpensive way to improve performance as well as get more space for your stuff. And there are basically two approaches:

Add a second drive.
Hard drive manufacturers sell a lot of external USB drives for this purpose. It's the easiest approach, taking only a few minutes to hook up, but it does very little to improve performance. Why run Windows on an aging 60 GB drive, while basically static data like photos and music sit happily on a much faster 750 GB drive?

Replace the primary drive.
Use this approach if you want to throw away that old 60 GB drive, and use only the 750 GB drive for Windows and all your data. Not only will this give you better performance, you'll have a lot less to worry about if you're running Windows on a new drive rather than one that's seen thousands of hours of use. The downside is that it's more work to completely replace your old drive, and that's what this section is about.

Thanks to improvements in technology, rapidly dropping prices of new hard disks, and a nifty tool in Windows 7, it's easier than ever to replace your old hard disk.

The procedure goes like this: first, connect your new drive to your PC alongside your old drive. Then, create an image of your old hard disk-a snapshot of every byte of data on the entire drive-and write the image to your new hard disk. Finally, disconnect the old drive and put the new one in its place.

Start by purchasing an SATA/IDE to USB 2.0 Adapte. Alternatively, you can use an external hard drive enclosure, although a unit like this may be a better investment, as it supports SATA, 3.5 desktop IDE, and 2.5 notebook IDE drives all from the same cable.

Next, plug the drive into the adapter, plug the power supply into the drive, and then plug the adapter into a free USB port on your PC.

Why don't I just plug the drive directly into my SATA or IDE controller? While it's true that you can connect your new drive to your motherboard's controller, there are several reasons to use a USB adapter like this one instead. First, it's quick and easy; you don't need to take your PC apart (yet) and you don't have to leave the new drive dangling from the side of your box while you transfer your data. Second, it's great for laptops that may not have a way to connect two drives at once. Third, it avoids the nasty problems you'd encounter if your PC tried to boot to the wrong drive in the middle of the procedure. And last but not least, when you're done, you can use the adapter to clear off the old drive. A device like this makes things so much easier.

When Windows detects and installs the new drive, it'll show up in Disk Drives branch in Device Manager (devmgmt.msc).As soon as Windows finishes installing the necessary drivers, open Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc), right-click the new drive in the lower pane, and select New Simple Volume

On the first page of the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Next, and then specify the size of the new partition.

You'll need to make two partitions on the new drive: the primary partition to become your new boot drive, and a secondary partition to temporarily hold the backup of your existing data. The second partition needs to be no larger than the capacity of your old hard disk, so set the primary partition to the total size of the new drive minus the total size of the old drive.

This is where your third-grade math comes in handy, but be prepared for things not to add up. If you're replacing a 60 GB hard disk with a 750 GB hard disk, you'd expect to set the first partition to 690 GB and use the remaining 60 GB for the second partition. But since drive manufacturers exaggerate- read, lie-about the capacities of their products, you'll have to determine the actual usable space first. For instance, a typical 750 GB hard disk has roughly 698 GB of actual storage capacity, which means you'd set 638 GB for the size of the first partition to leave 60 GB for the second. (Of course, if the old drive isn't completely full, you can get away with a little less on the second partition.)

So, at the prompt, type a value, in megabytes, for the size of the primary partition (i.e., 690000 for 690 GB) and then click Next. Follow the prompts to complete the wizard; make sure to format the drive with the NTFS filesystem, but don't assign a drive letter at this time.

Now, create the second partition in the remaining unused space, and have it consume the rest of the drive. Again, format it as NTFS, but this time, assign a drive letter (your choice).

It's now time to copy your data to the new drive. Luckily, all commercial editions of Windows 7 come with the full version of the Backup and Restore tool. (This is an improvement over Vista, which stingily provided full hard disk backup in only the Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise editions.) Start the Backup and Restore tool either from Control Panel or by running sdclt.exe.

On the left side of the window, click the Create a system image link. On the first page of the wizard, select On a hard disk, pick the second partition you just created, and click Next. Next, select the drives to image; notice your active Windows drive is already checked and grayed out. Click Next and then Start backup to begin.

When the backup is complete, power down your PC, remove your old drive, connect the new one to your primary controller, and then boot your PC.

When that's done, and you're able to boot Windows with the new drive, use the Disk Management tool to delete the secondary partition and extend the primary partition so that it consumes the whole drive.

Obviously, this solution requires that you boot off your original Windows disc to initiate the system recovery feature. To do away with this step, use third-party software to image your drive, such as DriveImage XML (free, http://www.runtime .org), HDClone Free Edition (free, http://www.miray.de), or Acronis True Image Home (commercial, http://www.acronis .com). All you do is create an image of your old hard disk and save it to the secondary partition of the new drive. Then use the same software to restore the image to the new drive's primary partition. When that's done, delete the secondary partition and extend the primary partition so that it consumes the whole drive, as described in the section "Work with Partitions" in this tutorial. Then, right-click the sole remaining partition and select Mark Partition as Active. Shut down Windows and then unplug both drives. Set the old drive aside and connect the new drive in its place.

Turn on your PC, and Windows should boot to the new drive.