Move Win7 partition to another disk

Question

I have a problem: my HP Stream has a 32GB built-in drive, and the software updates to Win7 need more space :-(

The partitions on the 32GB drive are:

• EFI
• MS protected
• Win7
• Windows recovery

I have a 64GB SHDC card in it, with linux installed (and dual boot). I'd like to swap them (so linux is on the 32GB drive & win7 on the 64GB one). I tried moving the MS protected + win7 partitions to the 64GB drive (after reformatting it), but then windows wouldn't boot and insisted on doing a full system recovery.

How can I move the installed Win7 to the 64GB drive?

• which partitions to move?
• what other changes to make (apart from post-move linux install)?

p.s. I've read the other answers relating to moving windows partitions, and they all assume that the old drive will be replaced by the new one. That isn't the case for me. I want to keep the existing drive as the boot drive, and move windows to another drive and have it dual bootable with linux on the old drive ...

Answer 1

With dual boot you must have grub installed. The following procedure might work:

• Copy the Win7 contents to the 64GB drive
• Let grub discover it so having 2 Win7 installations
• Verify that the new Win7 installation can boot
• Install Linux over the previous Win7 partition and update grub.

Take a backup image of the 32GB disk first and have some means of restoring it, just in case.

You will not be able to copy Windows from within Windows, so you will need to use a tool such as AOMEI Backupper Freeware and ensure you can boot it. Do not use a Linux Live CD/USB to copy Windows files.

I remark that an SHDC card is not as safe a media as a hard disk (nor as fast), so you should be careful with backups.