Partition Swapping

[Michael]

XPS/Dimension 630i.
This came with a 600GB HDD and I added a 1.5TB HDD. The 600 came with Vista
and I created a 100GB partition on the 1.5TB for Windows 7. I now want to
place 7 on the 600GB and move Vista to the 100GB partition. I've imaged
both the 600GB and 100GB separately using Acronis. Can I use the Windows 7
image and restore it to the 600GB HDD and vise versa?

 

[igotsaurus]

The 1.5. tb drive is much faster at read/writes than the 600gb clunker.
Keep Win 7 on the 1.5 tb drive and resize it to a larger partition---W7 and
Vista have the tools for this.
If you insist on moving an OS move Vista to a partition on the 1.5 TB drive.
If you prefer Vista to Win 7, the more I use Win7 the more it seems like
Vista SP3, you should see a few seconds shaved off your boot times using
the1.5tb drive, but that's about it.
If you keep the two OSes on separate hard drives and move the virtual drive
to the non-OS drive for each you may actually find overall faster
performance.
Bottom line: why do you want to do what you want to do?

 

[Michael]

The 1.5. tb drive is much faster at read/writes than the 600gb clunker.
Keep Win 7 on the 1.5 tb drive and resize it to a larger partition---W7
and Vista have the tools for this.
If you insist on moving an OS move Vista to a partition on the 1.5 TB
drive.
If you prefer Vista to Win 7, the more I use Win7 the more it seems like
Vista SP3, you should see a few seconds shaved off your boot times using
the1.5tb drive, but that's about it.
If you keep the two OSes on separate hard drives and move the virtual
drive to the non-OS drive for each you may actually find overall faster
performance.
Bottom line: why do you want to do what you want to do?

I'm using Windows 7 about 95% of the time. Basically, I use Vista because
their version of Movie Maker is much better than the Windows Live version.
I do a lot of video/photo editing and encoding for friends and family. I
originally bought the 1.5TB drive for storage, but I decided to dual boot
with Windows 7 RC just for the hell of it. I liked it so much I purchased
Ultimate and upgraded the RC.

I was going to resize the 1.5 drive, but disk management won't open in
Windows 7. I get an error saying it couldn't connect to the Virtual Disk
Service, so I have to do everything through Vista. I'd like to keep both
OS's on the smaller drive and use the full 1.5TB for storage. I was also
reading something about having a problem with Windows Boot Manager if I move
both OS's to the 600GB drive.

I'm not totally computer illiterate, but when it comes to this stuff I'm
still green.

Thanks for replying.

 

[andy]

XPS/Dimension 630i.
This came with a 600GB HDD and I added a 1.5TB HDD. The 600 came with Vista
and I created a 100GB partition on the 1.5TB for Windows 7. I now want to
place 7 on the 600GB and move Vista to the 100GB partition. I've imaged
both the 600GB and 100GB separately using Acronis. Can I use the Windows 7
image and restore it to the 600GB HDD and vise versa?

It can be done, but not simply as merely restoring each image on the
other drive.

Each drive has a unique disk signature located in its MBR. Each
installed operating system identifies the hard drives by their disk
signatures contained in the MountedDevices data field in the registry.
So even if the operating system is moved to the other drive, it's
still is going to think it's running on its old drive when it detects
it by the disk signature. The easiest fix for this problem is to swap
the disk signatures using a utility such as MBRWizard.

If you want to continue booting from the 600GB drive, you have to
create the BCD on it.

If you want an understanding of what's required to make this work,
Google mbr disk signature, and mounteddevices disk signature.

 

[Michael]

It can be done, but not simply as merely restoring each image on the
other drive.

Each drive has a unique disk signature located in its MBR. Each
installed operating system identifies the hard drives by their disk
signatures contained in the MountedDevices data field in the registry.
So even if the operating system is moved to the other drive, it's
still is going to think it's running on its old drive when it detects
it by the disk signature. The easiest fix for this problem is to swap
the disk signatures using a utility such as MBRWizard.

If you want to continue booting from the 600GB drive, you have to
create the BCD on it.

If you want an understanding of what's required to make this work,
Google mbr disk signature, and mounteddevices disk signature.

Thanks.