For weeks I've been tweaking Windows 7 settings, installing drivers and programs, and transferring files and folders onto a new system. Turns out that my hard drive may be faulty, so the seller sent me a replacement. I absolutely do not want to start from square one on the new drive and re-install what took me weeks to set up. I know I can image or clone the original hard drive, but I think there's several problems:
1. The new hard drive has on it another installation of Windows 7. Of course, I don't need it if I'm cloning the original drive, which also has Windows 7. I know that if I remove the original hard drive and install only the new hard drive it will auto-boot with Windows 7 set up screens. How do I stop the hard drive from doing this so that the two drives can be installed at the same time without having them boot at the same time? If I run the new hard drive only for the sake of getting through the set up, won't the boot file for the new drive be wrongly configured if I'm going to re-install the original drive, boot from the original drive, and then clone it?
2. The original hard drive was set up with a recovery partition. Can I clone the partition of the hard drive that has Windows 7 and my files and folders while still preserving the recovery partition? I have seen some info on forums (not sure if it's valid) where people are claiming you can't clone a hard drive and expect a recovery partition to still work properly.
*I'm also wondering if there's software available that you can download then create a CD that will boot while both drives are installed and you can clone one drive to the other drive this way.
1. The new hard drive has on it another installation of Windows 7. Of course, I don't need it if I'm cloning the original drive, which also has Windows 7. I know that if I remove the original hard drive and install only the new hard drive it will auto-boot with Windows 7 set up screens. How do I stop the hard drive from doing this so that the two drives can be installed at the same time without having them boot at the same time? If I run the new hard drive only for the sake of getting through the set up, won't the boot file for the new drive be wrongly configured if I'm going to re-install the original drive, boot from the original drive, and then clone it?
2. The original hard drive was set up with a recovery partition. Can I clone the partition of the hard drive that has Windows 7 and my files and folders while still preserving the recovery partition? I have seen some info on forums (not sure if it's valid) where people are claiming you can't clone a hard drive and expect a recovery partition to still work properly.
*I'm also wondering if there's software available that you can download then create a CD that will boot while both drives are installed and you can clone one drive to the other drive this way.
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