This will validate the integrity of the drive including a check for bad sectors without the need to partition and format the drive prior to use. Other drive manufactures such as Seagate also offer drive diagnostic software. Note: Prior to moving Windows 7 from the 80GB drive to the 500GB drive I downloaded and ran Western Digital’s Data LifeGuard Diagnostics “Extended Test” option on the new drive. Disk imaging will create an image of both partitions and restore both to the new hard drive. Disk cloning software may not be aware of the hidden partition and as a result only clone the Windows 7 partition, leaving you with an unbootable hard drive.

The first is ‘Drive Cloning’ and the second is ‘Drive Imaging’. Typically there are two methods used to move from an older/smaller drive to a new and larger drive: Note: If you originally installed Windows 7 on a drive that was already partitioned and formatted then there is a possibility the your drive only has a single partition (C:) which serves as both the ‘System’, ‘Active’ and ‘Boot’ partition. So it is imperative that any move to a new hard drive not only include the Windows 7 partition but also the 100MB ‘System, Reserved’ partition which must be the first partition on the new drive. The small hidden ‘System, Reserved’ partition serves as the BCD store (Boot Configuration Data) and Windows needs to access the information contained in this partition to boot and load properly. The second partition is the Windows 7 partition and is the ‘Boot’ partition.

The first of the two partitions (100MB in size) is hidden, has no drive letter assigned and is identified as the ‘System Reserved’ (System, Active) when viewing the drive’s characteristics using the ‘Disk Management’ utility.

Your existing drive however will have at least one but more likely a least two partitions both formatted as NTFS. The available space on a new drive is typically unallocated, has no partitions and is unformatted. How to move windows 7 to a new or larger hard drive using Backup and RestoreĪ step by step guide on how to replace your existing Windows 7 hard drive with a larger hard drive.

Hard drive with windows 7