What utility can move my Windows boot partition over to another hard drive? [closed]

DriveImage XML

DriveImage XML will do the job. It runs from within Windows and it can copy directly from drive to drive. A lot of people rave about it after good experiences with the software.

DriveImage XML is an easy to use and reliable program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives.

Image creation uses Microsoft's Volume Shadow Services (VSS), allowing you to create safe "hot images" even from drives currently in use. Images are stored in XML files, allowing you to process them with 3rd party tools. Never again be stuck with a useless backup! Restore images to drives without having to reboot. DriveImage XML is now faster than ever, offering two different compression levels.

EASEUS Disk Copy

EASEUS Disk Copy is a great alternative if you don't want to go for a 'hot' backup that runs from within Windows. Good review at lifehacker and on a par with DriveImage XML. They quite clearly state that it is ideal for moving from one disk to a larger one. Like other suggestions, this requires that you create a boot CD.

EASEUS Disk Copy is a potent freeware providing sector-by-sector disk/partition clone regardless of your operating system, file systems and partition scheme by creating a bootable CD. The sector-by-sector method assures you a copy 100% identical to the original. Disk Copy can be used for copy, cloning, or upgrading your original small hard drive to a new larger drive. Simply speaking, it can copy anything from the old hard drive including the deleted, lost files and inaccessible data. So, the freeware is a perfect tool for Data Recovery Wizard to recover files from a backup disk.

Although fsarchiver is quite an underrated allround (offline) non-gui Linux tool (from the creators of PartImage that iirc doesn't support Ext4), I agree that DriveImage XML is the best answer so far. But also try MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition. Next time. ;)

Here's a summary of tools for partition cloning I have used in the past:

• MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition (Home Edition is free)
• DriveImage XML (free for personal non-commercial use) (Disk To Disk)
• CloneZilla Live (Open Source)
• FSArchiver (Online with -A (untested))
• Ghost 4 Linux (Open Source)
• PartClone (Disk To Disk)
• PartImage (Open Source) (No Ext4) (Image Required)
• Mondo Rescue
• XXClone (Full Shadow Copy) (Skips EFS on NTFS)

( for offline cloning, for online cloning)

GParted

GParted on the Ubuntu (and I'm sure other Linux distros) Live CD will do exactly this. I've used it to successfully migrate entire operating systems from one dying drive to another new drive.

GParted is a free partition editor for graphically managing your disk partitions.

GParted is useful for tasks such as: creating space for new operating systems, restructuring disk space to separate user and operating system data, and copying partitions to enable upgrading to a larger hard disk drive.