Should have been easy: moving vista partition

Golden Ape · 11 Nov 2009 at 10:25

OK this should have been easy but is proving to be anything but. Here's the back ground: I've just got a new hard disk and a nice new copy of windows 7. I currently run Vista which is on an old hard disk along with a second partition for data. So I wanted to do this. Install new harddisk, create three new partitions (one for win7, one for the old vista, and one for data). So far so good.

Now my plan at this point was to clone vista across to one of the partitions (the second as it turns out) on the new disk. Then I would install win7 to the first partition and end up with a nice dual boot setup.

However, I've tried using Acronis and xxclone but I can't get a boot able vista clone onto the new hard disk. With acronis I backed up to an image then restored the image to the new disk, this seemed to go well but the when I try to boot (with the old hard disk disconected) I get a 'no system disk message'. I figured that this would something to do with missing MBRs or the like and tried using the vista Dvd to do a fix. Despite saying that it had fixed things there was no improvement. I also tried using xxclone to move the vista partition and make it bootable but after 12hours (i.e. when I woke up) the copy process seemed to have stalled at 40%.

Help! What do I do? Any suggestions for alternative methods or fixes?

bledd · 11 Nov 2009 at 11:03

boot with the old drive in.

go to disk management, set the new drive as 'active'

now turn it off
remove old drive

put 7 dvd in, boot from it and repair the boot/mbr with it

should work

Golden Ape · 11 Nov 2009 at 11:08

Thank you sir! I'll give that a go tonight or more possibly tomorrow night and let you know how it goes.

bledd · 11 Nov 2009 at 11:18

I'm not a fan of multiboot, but as I understand, that should fix the Windows 7 booting

from there a boot manager like Vista Boot Pro http://majorgeeks.com/VistaBootPRO_d5625.html might fix the issue of getting 7 and Vista in a menu

Personally, I'd just ditch Vista and jump in feet first with 7

Also, have you seen this Liger before? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zOWYj59BXI&feature=related
http://soulcare.org/Creation/liger.jpg
http://gigapple.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/liger.jpg

MASSIVE thing

Golden Ape · 11 Nov 2009 at 16:18

I'm not sure if it's the same Liger but I've certainly seen that same guy with one. They are massive, probably a 50% increase on top of the tiger (completely useless in the wild though). I can't help imagining riding around on one, would make an interesting trip down to the shops...