Moving my operating system-Windows 7

[pepperbegs]

Hi,

I would like to move my operating system from a slower 300g drive to a faster 1T drive.

What would be a good way to do this? (Its Windows 7 64 bit by the way.)

Would using control panel to make a disc image allow me to do this?

Anyone have experience doing this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd use the drive manufacturers utilities. AFAIK they all have something that'll make the task very easy. I always used Seagate's tools. The only requirement is one of the drives has to be from the manufacturer you're using. I would guess they all have similar terms.

 

[SimMike2]

Windows 7 has built in imaging software as part of their backup program. Just store the image on a separate drive, USB or whatever, pull the old drive, put in the new drive and boot to your Windows 7 install DVD. One of the options is restoring data. You can probably get a free version of Acronis True image that will also work. Check your hard drive manufacturers site for this info.

 

[RebateMonger]

Windows 7 has built in imaging software as part of their backup program.

Edit: I'm wrong about this. See my other post two posts down.

Only Win7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise. The other versions only have a file-level backup. Unfortunately.

Last week I used WD's free version of Acronis (from WD's Support site) to upgrade from a 180 GB IDE disk to a new WD 500 GB SATA disk. It was fast and worked fine. But this was with XP and no AHCI, so I don't know if there are any issues with Win7 or AHCI.

 

[Nothinman]

Only Win7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise. The other versions only have a file-level backup. Unfortunately.

Because home users would never want to image their machines...

 

[RebateMonger]

Windows 7 has built in imaging software as part of their backup program.

I'm sorry. You are right. I'm an idiot and got confused with Vista's capabilities. Windows 7 Home Premium (at least) DOES have image backup capability. I should know this because I've done it. I even wrote a long post on these Forums about it.

As I recall, there is at least one other difference between Home Premium and the "Business" versions. Home Premium can't do backups (at least not image backups) across a network.

Again, sorry.

 

[SimMike2]

I'm sorry. You are right. I'm an idiot and got confused with Vista's capabilities. Windows 7 Home Premium (at least) DOES have image backup capability. I should know this because I've done it. I even wrote a long post on these Forums about it.

As I recall, there is at least one other difference between Home Premium and the "Business" versions. Home Premium can't do backups (at least not image backups) across a network.

Again, sorry.

You are right about Vista. It was only Vista Business on up that had the imaging backup, which I used quite a bit. I think all versions of Win7 have the imaging, but I'm not sure if Win 7 Starter edition has it.