Swap hard drives of different size partitions
Hi,
I'm just trying to get confirmation on whether my idea is a good one or not and if not, why and how should I do it better. I don't need an idiots guide but suggestions. And before anyone suggests just reinstalling, that is not an option.
I have 1 laptop. I have 2 laptop hard drives. The laptop can take only 1 drive. Currently it has a 100gb drive in it. The spare drive is 320gb. I'd like to swap the installations so that the entire installation that is on the 100gb drive is moved the to 320gb and the entire installation on the 320gb is placed onto the 100gb.
My plan is to put the 320gb into the laptop and user gparted to resize the partition so that it is under 100gb, say 90gb. Yes the data on there is nowhere near 100gb so I can make the partition that small. Once the 320gb partition is shrunk to 90gb I was going to use something like ghost to image the drive. Suggestions for better options here would be welcome.
I was then going to swap the drives and then ghost the 100gb drive. I have a 2tb USB drive to put everything on so no worries about space. Once I have the 2 drive images I need to swap them over and I'm not sure how to do this bit. I know the disk image will be a file but how do I get it back onto the target drive as it isn't simply a matter of just copying? I have found disk imaging software on the web but I have no experience with any of them.
In short I need to move the installations on each drive and swap them without reinstalling anything.
If it helps, the 320gb has Windows 7 Professional on it and the 100gb has Windows 8 on it.
Thanks,
Lee
I'm just trying to get confirmation on whether my idea is a good one or not and if not, why and how should I do it better. I don't need an idiots guide but suggestions. And before anyone suggests just reinstalling, that is not an option.
I have 1 laptop. I have 2 laptop hard drives. The laptop can take only 1 drive. Currently it has a 100gb drive in it. The spare drive is 320gb. I'd like to swap the installations so that the entire installation that is on the 100gb drive is moved the to 320gb and the entire installation on the 320gb is placed onto the 100gb.
My plan is to put the 320gb into the laptop and user gparted to resize the partition so that it is under 100gb, say 90gb. Yes the data on there is nowhere near 100gb so I can make the partition that small. Once the 320gb partition is shrunk to 90gb I was going to use something like ghost to image the drive. Suggestions for better options here would be welcome.
I was then going to swap the drives and then ghost the 100gb drive. I have a 2tb USB drive to put everything on so no worries about space. Once I have the 2 drive images I need to swap them over and I'm not sure how to do this bit. I know the disk image will be a file but how do I get it back onto the target drive as it isn't simply a matter of just copying? I have found disk imaging software on the web but I have no experience with any of them.
In short I need to move the installations on each drive and swap them without reinstalling anything.
If it helps, the 320gb has Windows 7 Professional on it and the 100gb has Windows 8 on it.
Thanks,
Lee
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"... the 100 Gb drive may come from the time the bios was limited to 128 GB drives " ==> With Windows 8 ??????? :-)
... and the system is already using a 320GB drive (with Windows 7)
It has been a L...O...N...G time since drives were limited to 128GB !!! (At least a decade)
... and the system is already using a 320GB drive (with Windows 7)
It has been a L...O...N...G time since drives were limited to 128GB !!! (At least a decade)
ASKER
Both drives are bootable. The 320 is the original drive from the laptop. I don't know if the Windows 8 is a secure boot. How would I check? I'm not familiar with Windows 8 other than utterly hating it!
If YOU installed it, I'm sure it's not. If it was delivered with the laptop, then it almost certainly IS (Microsoft requires that OEM systems use Secure Boot).
If you can boot the system from a CD, then it is NOT a Secure Boot system.
If you can boot the system from a CD, then it is NOT a Secure Boot system.
ASKER
It was me that installed it. I installed both systems using this laptop. However, I need to swap the installations because the Windows 8 install on the 100gb is running out of space which is typical.
ASKER
There is a slight complication. I've just discovered that the Win7 insall has a second partition called BDEDrive which I will need to remove first of all. I'll sort that out first and then check the responses.
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ASKER
All seems to work just fine :)
Thanks.
Thanks.
the 100 Gb drive may come from the time the bios was limited to 128 GB drives
if so - you won't be able to put in a bigger sized drive than 128 GB (or say 120 GB) but you could partition the drive up into 3 partions
here more info about the drive size barriers :
http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm
so - what is the laptop model? you can also look on the manufacturer's site to check if bigger disk sizes are supported