Moving Windows 7 to New Hard Drive

[jcromano]

Running Windows 7 Ultimate on an older desktop computer with a 1 TB drive.

Last week, I started getting warning messages saying that the hard drive was failing. On a reboot, the disk was checked and some part of it was flagged as bad, but the computer (eventually) got through the check and repair and it does still boot now. I still get a warning message saying that failure is "imminent" at the start of each reboot.

I've bought another hard drive (2TB) and installed it.

I'd like to somehow move my entire existing Windows installation from the failing 1 TB drive to the new 2 TB drive. I'm not sure the best way to do so.

I don't have installation disks for the OS. It came OEM.

Does anyone here have advice for how I should proceed?

Regards,

Jim

 

[RLGL]

Make an image with win7 backup and restore, make recovery disc. disconnect the old drive . Insert recovery disc and follow the prompts

 

[corkyg]

I would just clone the old drive to the new drive.

 

[Ketchup]

Plug in both drives, boot to your existing drive, install a free program like Todo Backup Free, tell it to clone. and let it run while the computer is running. When it's done you should be able to unplug the old drive and boot from the new drive without being about to dell the difference. Just note that if the old drive is too far off, valuable files can be corrupted, creating issues with the cloning process.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Make an image with win7 backup and restore, make recovery disc. disconnect the old drive . Insert recovery disc and follow the prompts

Yes, do exactly that, using Win7's built-in "Backup and Restore". After making the system backup image, onto a portable external HDD of sufficient size, then (hopefully the PC has a DVD drive), pop in a blank DVD, and tell it to write a Recovery DVD (may only need a CD, not certain).

Then when that all is done (might choose to verify the backup, if you really want to be pedantic, but not fully necessary, if the HDD is actually failing), power down, swap the bad HDD with a good one of equal or larger size, power up, boot off of the recovery DVD, and plug in the external HDD, and choose "Restore from backup image" or whatever.

The entire process for an older Sandy i3 machine with a 320GB HDD, and a USB2.0 external HDD, took maybe 2 hours for me and my client.

 

[jcromano]

Yes, do exactly that, using Win7's built-in "Backup and Restore". After making the system backup image, onto a portable external HDD of sufficient size, then (hopefully the PC has a DVD drive), pop in a blank DVD, and tell it to write a Recovery DVD (may only need a CD, not certain).

Then when that all is done (might choose to verify the backup, if you really want to be pedantic, but not fully necessary, if the HDD is actually failing), power down, swap the bad HDD with a good one of equal or larger size, power up, boot off of the recovery DVD, and plug in the external HDD, and choose "Restore from backup image" or whatever.

The entire process for an older Sandy i3 machine with a 320GB HDD, and a USB2.0 external HDD, took maybe 2 hours for me and my client.

Thank you and all for the suggestions. I will try this one tonight.

I misunderstood the original suggestion, and I attempted to write the the system image backup to the new drive. I didn't realize I needed a third drive for that, the external hard drive. Thank you for clearing that up.

Last night/this morning, I tried doing using Windows Backup and Restore to write the image to the new drive. That task took many hours, and eventually failed this morning without completing. The error message suggested running chkdsk to scan both the source and destination drives for errors. Since I suspect the source drive is failing already, I don't think I need to run those scans.

I will try backing up to an external drive tonight. If that also fails, then I'll try the cloning methods others have mentioned.

One question--will I need the windows product key for the system restore? I've been unable to find it in our office.

Would I need the product key for the cloning method?

 

[ElFenix]

if you clone you shouldn't need the product key. i don't think it even prompts to be re-registered based on hardware change if the only change is the drive.

 

[jcromano]

If I do the clone method, will I have to re-assign the drive letter to the new drive so that it's the same letter as the old one it replaced?

 

[Ketchup]

Windows will assign automatically. It will not be C when you clone it, but if all is successful and it loads Windows it will take the C designation.