Copy Your Hard Drive with Windows 7

I got a new SATA hard drive and decided to make it my primary drive. My current hard disk was IDE and was pretty old, so the decision made sense. But I really didn't want to reinstall everything, so I looked into copying the old hard disk into the new one. This is called Disk Cloning and there are lots of programs that do this. I just wanted the easiest way.

I first looked into Hiren's Boot CD because I had used Hiren's Recovery Tools before. You burn a CD, boot from it, and one of its tools clones the hard drive. I was too lazy to create a boot CD, so I read on. I read about Clonezilla, Aconis (not free), and Paradigm (maybe free?), which all required you to make a system image (a file that's a snapshot of a hard disk), but ultimately decided I didn't want to look into third party software if possible. (It takes me a while to read enough to convince myself that third-party software isn't going to mess up my computer and is going to be user friendly enough to use.) I'm using Windows 7 and read that the built in Backup and Restore program worked well. I didn't have to download anything or burn anything, so I decided to try that first.

To use it, you need:

• The Windows 7 Installation CD (or you'll need to create a system repair CD)
• Your original hard drive
• Your new hard drive
• And some other storage system (DVDs/External Hard Drive/Internal Hard Drive) to store the image of your original hard drive.

WARNING: The new hard drive and other storage system must be at least the size of your original hard drive. The other storage system CAN NOT be the new hard drive.

To use Windows 7's backup and restore tool:

1. Go to Start Bar -> Control Panel -> Backup and Restore -> Create a System Image
2. Choose where you want to store the image and press next
3. Choose the drive (the other storage system) you want to back up and press "Start Backup"

It took about an hour and a half to create a backup image for a 200GB system. When the backup is done, shut down your machine.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: You now need to unplug the power to your original hard drive (or otherwise remove it from your system.) Your new hard drive and other storage system must remain accessible.

Then boot from your Windows 7 Installation CD (or a system repair disk.) You'll get the Windows 7 Installation Menu. Choose your language, then choose "Restore from System Image."

The system image you just made should already be selected. Choose it and press next.

By default, the system restore program will take every hard disk on your system (except for the one holding the system image), delete it, format it, and restore the system image on it. So make sure to exclude any hard disks you don't want to be replaced on the next screen, then continue.

When I first tried this, I got an error that said no suitable disks were found. I wasted half an hour trying to figure out what was wrong. I ended up needing to cancel, select "Command Prompt" from the tools menu, and then doing the following:

1. Type "diskpart"
2. Type "select disk=disk0"
3. Type "detail disk"
4. (Read the output and make sure this disk is the new hard drive)
5. Type "clean"
6. Type "exit"

Select "Restore system from System Image" and this time there hopefully won't be an error.

Your system should restore and you should boot up into windows (you may need to go into your system BIOS to make sure your new drive is set as a boot device.) You can shut down the computer and plug your old hard disk back in if you'd like to continue using it for storage. Make sure it's not your primary boot device in BIOS! If windows doesn't show the old drive, you may need to right click "My Computer", select "Manage", select "Disk Management", and then right click your old drive and select "Online."

When I finished switching my primary drive, I brought up my Windows System Rating. Up to a 5.9 ... ... ... ... it makes me want to upgrade my machine more. Microsoft and your achievement points.... *sigh*