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I have bought a new laptop but the HDD, which runs at 5400 rpm, is not sufficient for me. The laptop runs Windows 7 64-bit.

I have my 'old' one (a better one - Seagate Momentus 7200 rpm) and I would like to replace it but without reinstalling everything.

And there my question arises: can I copy my boot partition from my laptop hard drive to my old drive so that it will boot from it properly? If so, then how to do it? Will Norton Ghost be useful here?

My point would be to just replace this partition and leave the rest.

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3 Answers 3

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Windows 7 has a very good built in backup system. Do a full backup to an external drive, boot with an install/recovery CD, tell it to restore, and you should be good:

  1. Open Backup and Restore by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, and then clicking Backup and Restore.

  2. In the left pane, click Create new, full backup.

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I think you want more than the boot sector. Windows installs on laptops are very much specific to the hardware.

Start with a clean HDD and see if you can get any OS to boot with the laptop hardware.

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  • Using a new drive in the same laptop shouldn't prove to be a tough endeavor. The drive controller isn't changing, so there should be little to no issue with windows drivers/configuration.
    – xelco52
    Mar 24, 2011 at 15:22
  • Oh, ok. If your old hdd is good. Copy partn or ghost to the new drive. Try to boot the new one. You have the old as backup. You might have a boot sector issue. If so, it should be fixable.
    – Anonymous
    Mar 24, 2011 at 18:04
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Yes, ghost will do the trick on windows. "Ghost for Linux" (G4L) is an option for linux. I'm not exactly sure what you're envisioning, but you'll be best served by cloning the old drive to the new drive. Two tutorials included below to familiarize you with the process:

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  • Hello, I have checked your links to these tutorials and : they are kind of complicated and involve access to desktop computer (which I don't have) and floppy disc ( the same ) is there any other simpler way ? I heard about hiren's bootcd or norton livecd or something like this.
    – Anonymous
    Mar 24, 2011 at 19:56
  • Sure - Hiren's Boot CD is an option. It includes "DriveImage XML" which is a free drive cloning app similiar to Ghost. And if i'm not mistaken, with DriveImage you can clone a drive that is currently in use, so you don't need a desktop PC. Here is another tutorial for using DriveImage XML: bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial160.html
    – xelco52
    Mar 24, 2011 at 20:08
  • I have tried to use DriveImageXML from normally running Windows but I get some errors as I just start making the image of my C: drive. I will download Hiren's Boot CD and try to do it from it.
    – Anonymous
    Mar 24, 2011 at 21:54
  • Now I have used "MiniTool Partition WIzard Home edition" (I don't know why, I just google epartition software and give it a go) and make a full disc copy and I failed - I get a bluescreen when I boot from the drive I copied to (when windows logo pops up after BIOS)
    – Patryk
    Mar 25, 2011 at 10:13

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