Shoutbox

At the moment I have the stuff I don't use much on a fast Samsung SpinPoint hard disk (Disk 0) and my Windows 7 on an old, slower hard disk (Disk 1). I'd like to swap this around.



Once complete, it should be like this:

Disk 0: Win7 | Downloads
Disk 1: XP | Ubuntu

Downloads can stay on Disk 0, as it'll be faster on the same disk as Windows 7.

So my question is, what's the best way to do this?

The partition types are probably messed up, as I presume Windows 7 should now be the primary..?

Yes this is possible to do, but you will need a lot of free space and a lot of free time. If you have a 3rd disk, this will be much easier. You will need to make an image of BOTH disks before starting the swap, then restore them to the appropriate disks. If you don't have a 3rd disk, do the swap in this order:

Image Disk0, and put it in the free space of Disk1
Clone Disk 1 onto Disk 0
Restore image to Disk 1

However, looking at the size of Disk0, you probably won't have enough free space in which to do this

As for the Primary, no it is not messed up. A primary partition is just a 'basic' partition type. The others labeled Logical are just created differently in their creation

Hmm. I don't have a 3rd disk unfortunately.

How's this? I got rid of Ubuntu for now and shrunk the Downloads partitions to allow more space.



What would you recommend for imaging?

Chris

just a suggestion, if you wanna use Ubuntu, why not just download Windows VirtualBox an install it in there

You will still need t create an image of each of the partitions, and put the images on the Win7 partition. So if the total used space on WinXP and Downloads exceeds the free space on Win7, you'll need to delete more or find another spare disk.

As for actually creating the images, there was a thread not too long ago by Nagamasa that contains a few suggestions.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris4
Hmm. I don't have a 3rd disk unfortunately.

How's this? I got rid of Ubuntu for now and shrunk the Downloads partitions to allow more space.



What would you recommend for imaging?

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In theory you now can clone the Win7 partition (which is 115GB) to the space of that unallocated space on physical Disk0 (which is 126GB).

After that you can remove Win7 from Disk1 and put XP there in similar fashion.

After that remove XP from Disk0 and re-allocated the freedup space to the other partitions (or make a new partition for just documents and data or something).

However: Make sure you keep the originally assigned drive letters!!!! You can not simply move a OS from a logical drive X: to another logical drive Y: because that would otherwise break a gazzilion things in the OS. If you want other drive letters, the only safe option is to re-install the OS.

Thanks for replies, but i've messed up. I used Partition Manager to resize the partitions to shrink them (to reduce the free space from like 50% to 10%) and now my pc won't boot, it just goes to a black screen with flashing cursor. It's straight after the first BIOS screen so can't get into Safe Mode or anything. Any ideas?

(Posted from my mobile)

Edit: Just run Windows 7 dvd Startup Repair, 1 problem detected, after restart still the same.

Edit2: It won't run a CHKDSK for Win7 G: (disk 1) "cannot open volume for direct access".

Edit3: the Win7 dvd is now recognising G: and the startup repair now says no problems detected, but still the same. Tried using DISKPART in Command Prompt to set G: as active (suggested by google result) but its unable to because its a Logical partition. Tried resetting BIOS to default too. I'll try 'extending' the partition using DISKPART in a sec...

Edit4: Extended it, but still the same. <-- Bad choice, says JK.

When i set the hard disk at top boot priority, it tries to boot it but says "Reboot and select a proper boot device ... or  boot media in selected boot device and press a key..." I'll google it.

Edit5: Google results just say about the boot priority list, but i've tried just setting the hard disk as top then disable the others or enable them all or even reset to default...

Tried using gparted to "check and repair" and "flag as boot" as suggested here, no luck.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris4
Reboot and select a proper boot device

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When my HD broke, that was the message I received.
So I'd tell you are in a pretty bad situation, except if you have a recent backup.

I can still access all the files with Command Prompt, so I'm pretty sure it's ok. DISKPART also reports that all partitions are "healthy", there's just a problem with it booting which I can't work out.

I've tried all bootrec commands..

/fixmbr - Didn't fix.
/fixboot - "Element not found."
/scanos - Didn't fix.
/rebuildbcd - "Element not found."

Why don't you try copying the files from "Windows XP" to that unallocated space in a Live CD and reinstalling XP [or 7] there?