Migrating Windows 7 to new hard drive/partition

Solution 1:

I found that cloning Windows partition to a different disk fails all too often, sometimes because of the changed drive letters, sometimes because of botched boot records, etc. The following two solutions helped me many times, but they are not 100% foolproof either:

• Use "Repair" function of Windows 7 boot disk. It often manages to repair many boot problems. Change the boot drive back to C: using these instructions. Unfortunately, this does not work in 100% of cases.

• Alternative approach: From within Windows (booted into your old partition), create a mirror of your boot/system partition as your new partition. After the mirror sync completes, break the mirror and keep the new partition only. This method requires converting your disks to dynamic disks, which may cause problems if you need to access these disks from Linux or other non-Windows OSes.

Solution 2:

You can install linux alongside windows. It will take like 2 Gb and grub will detect windows and it will show up in boot menu. You can make it default after 1 sec delay. As an added bonus you will have spare system to boot into in case of emergency. I always do that.