I have a 2 disk, dual boot system.
Drive 0 has Vista Business installed. I'm dual booting Server 2008 Standard
which is on Drive 1.
I want to increase the size of Drive 1. What is the best way to do this?
I was thinking I could boot in Vista (Drive 0) and make a full backup of
Drive 1. Upgrade Drive 1 to the large disk and then restore Drive 1 from
backup. What other method can I use?
IF (sic) I read you right, then there are easier ways to do this.
first, check that I DO get what you mean.
1) you have two physical HD's, one with Vista installed, and one with
Server 2008 - operating off a dual-boot menu (presumably the Server
one?)
2) You want to change the HD for Server to a larger one.
3) rather than reinstall to the larger drive, you want to clone the
existing installation to the new drive, and expand the partition to
the full drive capacity
If that's the case, then you really need a partition manager
www.bootitng.com - BootItNG (BING) - provides a tool that should be
able to accomplish what you want. - the following instructions should
work with this
a) remove the Vista HD from the system, and plug in the new HD
instead.
b) Boot to the BING partition manager console
c) Copy the partition from the Server 2008 HD to the new HD - then
c.1) expand the resulting partition to the full disk size
c.2) copy the HD ID from one disk to the other
d) shut down the PC, remove the old HD, and move the new one to the
old one's connectors.
e) reinstall the Vista HD
f) boot as normal -
with any luck your system will boot as normal, to both Vista and
Server 2008 - although you may find that one or both want to reboot
again to complete the recognition of the new HD.
HTH