Pleas help imaging / copying drive

[OlafSicky]

I found a guide showing how to copy an HD using Gparted and clonezilla
and just can't get it done.
I'm copying the HD on a smaller SSD
I did the following.

1. Shrunk the partition with windows into a smaller one than the SSD ( there is a secondary partition on HD )
2. Created an image
3. Tried restoring but clonezilla is not finding it ( I’m guessing it's damaged) I tried making a new one 2 more times
4. Gave up on making an image and restoring it
5. Figured out that Gparted has a copy option did that no problems took very little time
6. When I try to boot from the new ssd i get boot disk not found. ( I’m assuming MBR error) tried repairing it using some tools I found on the internet didn't work

I don't want to reinstall windows on this thing. Does anyone know of any other things I could try or programs? Gparted worked great shrunk the partition no errors on the disk boots up fine etc. I only have a problem booting from the copy.

 

[Motorheader]

Either Macrium reflect free, Paragon backup & recovery 2012 free, or Easeus Partition Master Home Edition should get it done for you.

 

[wpcoe]

I've long wondered about a strategy for migrating Windows to a new SSD drive:

Plug in only the new drive, then using DVD/USB, run a Windows 7 custom installation up until it finishes creating the primary partition, and then abort the process. At that point, you should have a properly aligned partition, no?

If so, then you can use any number of programs, including Windows backup image to clone the old drive to the new one.

What obvious pitfalls am I overlooking?

 

[razel]

@olafsicky: Your new partition doesn't sound like it was marked as active. Marking it active, will allow you to boot from it. If you are on Vista/Win7 you can run the setup disk and perform a bootup repair. If you still have your old disk data intact, I'd boot from that, go to 'Disk Management' and mark your new drive as active.

@wpcoe: If you are using the built-in image backup in Win7 during the restore you don't need to create the primary partition. It will be created and aligned when you perform the restore. The only pitfall with the built-in image backup is restoring to smaller drives. It will error out. You will need to shrink the partition using 'Disk Management', but even then from what I remember it took too long to shrink and required a little bit more massaging. However, it's been awhile since 2009 so, I hope MS has fixed it since.

 

[OlafSicky]

This is actually for an old xp box just wanted to refresh it a bit will try your suggestions later. The SSD was formatted in W7 first. I did mark the SSD as active. The HD was resided to 23GB the ssd is 64GB perhaps I went overboard with the resizing. I would prefer a program that boots from usb don't have any cd's

 

[Motorheader]

Paragon backup & recovery 2012 free allows you to make a bootable USB flash drive.

 

[wpcoe]

If you are using the built-in image backup in Win7 during the restore you don't need to create the primary partition. It will be created and aligned when you perform the restore.

I didn't know (or forgot) that Win7 image restore would create an aligned partition. Will save a bit of time and effort in my next upgrade.

 

[OlafSicky]

Well I tried using Macrium reflect a few times with no success. The first time I just imaged windows and the second time just the partition which partitioned my SSD. Both times windows didn't boot. Does anyone have any other ideas. The HD c: is 24gb after gparted shrink (7gb used) system restore partition is like 10gb. The SSD is 61 gb M4. I really don't want to install windows on it again (xp). I even formatted the ssd again under xp still didn't work.
There mast be a better easier way to copy a c: drive onto an ssd and have it work.

 

[groberts101]

Acronis will do all that you need to do here and even make the recovery disk from USB as well.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

Which Acronis product?

 

[Old Hippie]

Which Acronis product?

Acronis True Image does everything.

 

[Pinecone-sw]

Thanks

 

[exdeath]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=33011843&postcount=4

 

[Dessert Tears]

You will need to shrink the partition using 'Disk Management', but even then from what I remember it took too long to shrink and required a little bit more massaging.

I had problems with unmovable files when I tried to shrink my Windows 7 OS drive. The shrink itself was fast enough.

Paragon backup & recovery 2012 free allows you to make a bootable USB flash drive.

Acronis will do all that you need to do here and even make the recovery disk from USB as well.

Do these boot disks work for backing up the image? I've been using my desktop to image a laptop's drive with Macrium Reflect Free, but I have to remove the drive. I would prefer to image the system partition to the data partition on the same drive, without including the backup software. I found Drive Image XML with searching, and Hiren's BootCD for making WinPE boot disks.

 

[Old Hippie]

The boot disk is to start a non-bootable machine and find/restore a previously made back-up.

The back-up should be on a separate drive.

 

[Dessert Tears]

The boot disk is to start a non-bootable machine and find/restore a previously made back-up.

The back-up should be on a separate drive.

Thanks for the reply. I read on TweakHound that Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost can make boot disks for doing the backup. I was planning to move the image file to an external hard drive immediately.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I used the easeus disk copy tool but as with all things your mileage may vary.

 

[Old Hippie]

There's various ways to back-up a 'C' drive.

One is to 'clone' and one is to 'image'.....

Explanation of the difference between creating a backup and disk cloning

Description
The Backup operation of Acronis software creates an image file for backup and disaster recovery purposes, while the Disk Clone tool simply copies/moves the entire contents of one hard disk drive to another. Here's how both tools work and when you should use them.

When you create an backup with Acronis True Image or Acronis Backup & Recovery, you get a compressed .tib file containing an exact copy of your hard disk, a disk partition or individual files or folders (you make this choice when you create an image archive).

If you create a backup of disk or partition, this backup contains everything that resides on the selected disk/partition, including operating system, applications and all files and folders. You can save this image to any supported storage device and use it as a backup or for disaster recovery purposes.

When you use the Disk Clone tool, you copy all contents of one hard disk drive onto another hard disk drive: as a result, both the source and the target disk have the same data. This function allows you to transfer all the information (including the operating system and installed programs) from a small hard disk drive to a large one without having to reinstall and reconfigure all of your software. Disk Clone operation it is not generally used as a backup strategy, as it offers little flexibility.

In general, disk clone is a one time operation designed to clone one disk to a different one for the purpose of migrating to a larger hard drive or to a new machine.