HDD Upgrade

[bimbim18]

I got a new HDD for christmas (thankfully)

My current HDD is a 500GB Seagate

My new one will be a 1TB Seagate.

I want to use the 1TB as my boot & primary drive and my 500GB as an archive for older stuff i dont access often but don't want to delete.

Is there any easy way to transfer my settings, installs OS, etc to my new HDD without the headaches of a clean install?


(p.s. my OS is WIN7-64 upgraded from Vista-64)

 

[sminlal]

You can use the Windows 7 Backup facility to make a "System Image" backup image of your old drive and restore it to the new drive.

 

[bimbim18]

and i can set it to my new boot disk from there?

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Try Acronis True Image. Worked great for me. It cloned my 250GB to a new 500GB. After that I removed the 250GB, used only the 500GB, checked that all my files were good and then I used the 250GB to build anothe system.

I even used the free 14 or 30 day trial version so I got the program for free for a few weeks only though.

 

[sminlal]

and i can set it to my new boot disk from there?

Yes. I was able to move my Windows 7 system from an HDD to an SSD doing this. The SSD booted fine after the restore. But I did use a third disk to hold the backup.

(Note to people thinking to use this to migrate from HDD to SSD - this isn't a good choice for because it doesn't fix the partition offset problem. It's better to reinstall. I was only doing this to compare performance for the RC version between HDD and SSD before I reinstalled the RTM version from scratch onto the SSD).

 

[hundredislandsboy]

Windows 7 backup is not going to be easier than using Acronis. It's for backing up files and not for cloning hard drive to hard drive.

 

[sminlal]

I never said it was easier, but it has the advantage that everyone who runs Windows 7 already has it.

 

[bimbim18]

Well I tried several options:

Turns out my old HDD had an error that only turned up during a CHKDSK. Acronis seemed to be easiest to use, but after CHKDSK fixed the error it rendered my 30 day trial expired (the following day)

Windows options were a bit confusing honestly. I tried a few (all halted by the same error) but after getting the error fixed through CHKDSK /f I went to the seagate website and DLed thier wizard. I selected clone. Not only did it clone the disk for me but it automatically swapped my new HDD into the C: drive letter assignment and made it my primary boot drive. 100% awesomesauce!

thanks guys ^^