Move all data from one hard drive To another

powercroat783

Distinguished
Aug 18, 2011
136
0
18,710
Ok so I have a bit of a problem. Currently I have three logical drives that appear on my computer. One is my C: drive, that has my windows install and documents, etc. etc. The other drive is my D: drive which contains basepoints for VmWare which I use to test my software. This can really be left alone. The Other drive is a new B: drive that is completely blank.

I want to move my entire C: Drive onto the B: Drive. Make it bootable and everything. The only issue is that the B: drive is slightly smaller (I'm talking about a couple hundred megabytes). They are both around the size of 939 GB. I only have used up around <100GB on the C: Drive. If you are asking why, the C: Drive is a single drive whereas the B: Drive is a RAID 5 Array. I would prefer to have this done in a very safe manner. I cannot afford to lose my data. I have plenty of extra Hard Drives, more than I can count. A large set of instructions is perfectly fine with me. Let me know if you need more information.
 
What I would do, is to remove all drives from the system except the RAID 5 array, make sure it is initialized by your RAID controller properly (as the only drives in the system), then install your operating system on the drive. Then add your "D:" drive and "C:" drive back (they will have to be labeled differently), and move the data from the old "C:" to your RAID array. You will have to reinstall your programs using this method.

Method B - which carries some risk, is using a program like Paragon ( http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/features.html ) that will create an image of your drive, then remove all drives except your RAID array, make sure it is initialized properly by the controller, and restore the image to that drive (theoretically, the RAID drive array is a single drive to the OS). The RAID array would become the "C:" drive, and then install the "D:" drive with has your VmWare. Last, install the old "C:" (make sure your restore is 100% accurate), and format it.