Issues upgrading System/OS disk

[Demitasse]

Hi,

I'm trying to upgrade my OS drive from an 80GB disk to a 250GB disk.

I did a device-to-device clone in Clonezilla. After it finished, I removed the 80GB disk and replaced it with the 250GB disk. Unfortunately, I could not get Windows (Vista Home Prm 32b) to boot, receiving a "winload.exe is missing or corrupt" error when trying to boot from the 250GB.

I reinstalled the 80GB and everything booted back up as normal, then hooked up the 250GB to check its contents. Turns out Clonezilla made an 80GB partition on the disk, then proceeded to clone the contents. This left the remaining space on the disk as an unallocated partition, which I didn't want.

So now I'm wondering:

1. How can I clone the 80GB onto the 250GB without creating an 80 gig partition?
2. Why the winload.exe error? Was it because the 250GB wasn't assigned to C:?

Thanks for your help!

 

[RebateMonger]

To copy from a smaller disk to a larger disk, you can boot from CD and clone between two connected disks.

To expand partition to a larger disk, use EXPERT mode in Clonezilla. Click on "-r" option in the first option screen, then select "k1" option in the second option screen. Answer "Y" to all the other questions. I've moved Windows from a smaller to a larger disk using Clonezilla and this technique a couple of times.

There's additional instructions for slightly different techniques in the Clonezilla FAQ.

 

[Demitasse]

Hi,

Thanks for the tips. I actually ended up re-doing the clone using a program called HDClone, which can expand the partition automatically (and looking at the 250GB disk contents it seems to have done it properly).

As for the winload.exe error, apparently it's pretty common when cloning Vista/7 installations due to a redesigned boot procedure. Luckily there is a fix that takes care of it.

I'm going to put the 250GB in tomorrow morning. I expect a bunch of Changed Drive Letter errors, but fortunately the fix for that isn't too complicated either

 

[Demitasse]

Installing the HDClone-prepared image worked smoothly. I didn't even need to make any BCDEdit modifications! Windows booted no problem, and surprisingly the drive was recognized as C:, and not whatever it was when I cloned to it (H: I think). I assume HDClone made some modifications to the bootloader on the cloned disk to ensure the clone would boot properly. I remember it did, after the cloning process, have a dialog box to adjust "media parameters," which made mention of the Master Boot Record and Boot Sectors.

Still, I ran the Vista Startup Repair after a reboot just to be sure. After it examined the boot entries, it did find one Partition/Volume error, which it repaired.

Everything's running smoothly now . I'll be sure to keep your tips re: Clonezilla in mind for the future, as HDClone (Free version) limits copy speed to 17MB/sec and I may want to speed things up if cloning a large volume later on!