Home AOMEI Products Support

Move windows 7 from a dual boot HDD to a new HDD and keep dual boot

edited January 2018 in AOMEI Products Support

I currently have one 500GB HDD partitioned as follows:

1 - Windows 7 100GB (reduced to fit on a 160GB HDD

2- Windows 10 on the the remaining partition.(default OS)


I have been given a new 160GB HD that I want to put Windows 7 on.

I actually want to 'MOVE' the current Windows 7 partition to the new 160HDD, and
still have a 'dual boot' system' with Windows 10 being the default
operating system.

There will be no problem making the 160HDD and 'unallocated' single
partition.

Can this be done using AOMEI Partition copy? 

And still have a dual boot?  I already have EasyBCD if that helps


Eventually the 500GB HDD wil be re-partitioned to a WIndows 10 and a storage HDD

Comments

  • So you install 2 HDD's in a desktop PC.

    The 160 GB drive will contain a Partition clone (or partition backup/restore) from the 100 GB partition. You don't need system partition on the 160GB, the Win7 partition will be sufficient.

    With EasyBCD you can add that copy to the boot menu.

    Then you have 3 entries: Win10, old Win7, new Win7. 

    If everything works as expected, you can delete Old Win7 from the boot menu and

    delete that partition from the 500 GB disk.

  • Are you saying this can be done using Aomei partition assistant copy partition function?  

    And won't the 3 OS's confuse the boot menu?  

    I would remove the Win7 Partition from the 500GB drive and install from the DVD, but jeez, thats about a thousand or more updates that would take hours(if not days).

    Sorry to be so dense, but I am new to GUI partition managers. Everything in my long ago world was all done manually and I have forgotten all of that.

  • edited January 2018

    Yes, just a partititon clone from old hdd to new hdd and a new boot menu entry with EasyBCD  is enough.

    Even BIOS or UEFI installations can be mixed that way.

    This is a matter of 30 minutes or so.


    No, the boot menu never gets confused. Every OS resides in its own partition. I have test computers with 8 OS's or so.


    But, when you mix Win8 or 10  with older OS, you better turn fast boot off in the energy settings of 8 or 10 and don't use the Metro bootloader in EasyBCD. The old black/white Dos boot menu style is still the fastest.


    BTW. I am talking about the Free Aomei Backupper, not the Partition Assistant.

    Edit: I just tested the Copy partition from Partition Assistant and it does the job too. Even faster.

    Mind that if you copy an OS partition to another partition on the same HDD and you boot from that copy then the partition mapping may get confused. The C: might still be pointing to the original or some partitions might be invisible. To solve this, one must delete all but the first entry in the registry of HKLM/System/MountedDevices. It will rebuild mapping on first reboot




  • HA! I wish I had come here and read your edit before downloading and installing backupper!   I almost did the PA cloning last night, but has trouble pulling the trigger on it!  

    Anyway, backerupper got the job done and so far so good!  Took longer thatn 30 minutesm but at my age I am not going anywhere in a hurry!

    I'll give it a few days then get rid of the original Win7 partition on the 500GB drive. 

    Thank you for your patience and understanding!  This is a lot diferent than setting up an HP-UX machine with bundles of cad and other software, then 'cloning' them.  Took forever!


    But there are other things about backupper that will be useful, so it wasn't a waste of time.


    Again, Thanks for your time and effort.

    Bill L


    And yes, the old black/white boot menu is faster. II learned that a couple of years back. Besides I just flat out don't like Win10 fast boot!


Sign In or Register to comment.