Copy Vista Boot Partition

[spacejamz]

I received a replacement 500 GB SATA drive from Seagate that I would like to copy the my existing boot partition to.

I used seagate tools disk that came with the seagate drive to setup the new drive as the boot drive. I partitioned the 500 GB drive into 100 GB (which will be the boot drive) and two 200 GB drives for storage. It then copied the partition of my existing boot drive (which has a 40 GB drive where my current Vista os boot from).

After it copied the partition, I removed the old drive and tried to boot up with the new one and got some error about not being able to boot from the C:\ drive.

My guess is that the Seagate tools disk doesn't play well with the Vista.

What other application (hopefully some freeware) can I use to copy a Vista partition from one drive to another?

I really would rather not reinstall Vista if I can avoid it...

 

[pcgeek11]

Acronis Trueimage version 10 will clone it just fine, unfortunatly it is not free.

pcgeek11

 

[kaioshade]

Paragon Drive backup will also do the job, and they have a trial that is fully functional.

 

[Boyo]

I use Acronis True Image. You can downlowd a free trial that will give you full access for 14 days. Try using that to copy your info.

 

[Navid]

Did you boot to the Vista DVD and did a repair to see if it would fix it?

 

[spacejamz]

Originally posted by: Navid
Did you boot to the Vista DVD and did a repair to see if it would fix it?

I did boot with the Vista DVD (i have the Premium Upgrade version)....

I did not try the repair option though...will that let me copy a partition?

Here are the instructions from the Seagate Site

I did not see this option on my screen:

Other options are available under the Drive options (advanced) selection, item #3. This will reveal options that will allow you to change from the default of one partition for the drive.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: Navid
Did you boot to the Vista DVD and did a repair to see if it would fix it?

I did boot with the Vista DVD (i have the Premium Upgrade version)....

I did not try the repair option though...will that let me copy a partition?

That is not what I meant!

You used the Seagate tool and transferred the content of your hard drive from the old one to the new one.
Remove the old drive from the system. Set the new one to be in the boot priority list in your BIOS and reboot.
If it fails to boot, put the Vista DVD in and reboot and boot to it and attempt a repair. It may be able to correct the new drive contents so that you can boot to it.

 

[oog]

can't you do a backup and restore to the new drive?

 

[spacejamz]

the paragon software didn't work...

it copied all of the files over, but the drive still is not bootable...on top of that, when paragon copied the partitions over, it actually unpartitioned my existing drive and everthing on it was gone.

i am just going to reload everything from scratch...

 

[Pirotech]

another vote for true image, it works perfectly with vista.