Boot and system on different drives, need to move system files. Win 7

[Chris Wilson]

I have discovered a problem I wasn't even aware I had until trying to do a system image to a tape drive. It seems when I refurbished my PC I have ended up with the the boot files for Windows 7 Pro 64 bit on my SSD C: Drive, and the system files on a RAID 1 SATA array of two 1 Tb drives. I want to move the system files to my C: Drive , which is the SSD one. In the bios I have confirmed disabling the RAID drives causes Windows to fail to boot.

The fact the system files are on a different drive is causing issues when doing a system image as the destination drive also contains said files and some software is saying it cannot do this. Plus I think for best reliability the RAID needs to be independent of Windows boot and system files?

For clarity I have put a full screen size shot of Windows 7 Disk Management showing how the drives are currently at http://www.chriswilson.tv/partitions.jpg

Can anyone tell me how to safely achieve this movement of the system files to my SSD C: Drive please? Thanks.

I Googled this a little and it seems this is possible to do by booting into the Win 7 CD and going to the repair utility. But in all the Googled info the system files seem to be in a separate partition, but according to my Disk Manager mine are not. Will this still work? Do I need to unplug the RAID 1 drives first? Do I need to change the boot order in the bios first (first as in before running the repair utility on the Win 7 CD?), and put C: Drive after the CD drive and disable the RAID 1 Drives in the boot menu? Do I need to make the C: Drive partition "Active"? Is this all a risky process?

Thanks.

 

[Chris Wilson]

Hi, thanks for the detailed reply,. Initially the computer had a C: Drive (SSD) and a single D: Drive (normal platter drive). When I installed Win 7 Pro 64 bit it must have put the boot and system files on the D: Drive. Despite being new that D; Drive soon started to fail with errors. I lost some data, but nothing critical. I then decided to rebuild it with a RAID 1 pair of D: Drives. It was then I realised the PC has Sytem files and the Boot directory on the D: Drive (s).

What I eventually found, after discovering Windows 7 repair utility, even run several times, would not fix it, after disconnecting the RAID pair, was Visual BCD, a small free application. It easily moved the Sytem and Boot stuff to the C: Drive. I then took ownership of the old Boot directory and bootmgr on the D: Drives and reset permissions and deleted them. I can now boot solely off the C: Drive, even with the RAID discoonected. AFAIK ther's no real problem not having the hidden 100Mb partition.


Thanks to some more reading and your very helpful reply I will go about my next Windows 7 install with only one drive connected, although I think I would still prefer no hidden partition, and I have seen how to achieve that by partitioning before allowing the Windows 7 DVD to load the OS.

Please see:

http://www.chriswilson.tv/manager.jpg

http://www.chriswilson.tv/root2.jpg

http://www.chriswilson.tv/D_Drive.jpg



Thanks again!