Migrate C Drive

Question

I am looking to migrate the C Partition from a Windows 7 PC from about 2008. I would like to copy the C Partition to a new PC. I am experienced in troubleshooting boot issues, copy/restoring partitions, and stuff like that. Because the older PC is BIOS/MBR, and the new one is UEFI/GPT, I anticipate this will may require additional steps.

The tools I have, if case I need them are:

Hirens (new and old), Supergrub (hybrid), Linux Zorin, Boot Repair, Windows (all vers),

I don't want to copy the entire disk, just the necessary partitions.

Here is my guess for how to try this:

1. use Gnome-Disks to copy the C Partition & Restore to new SSD
2. use Boot Repair to detect the migrated C Partition and create the EFI files to put into the EFI partition
3. attempt to boot to it
4. if fail, use Easy BCD Edit to somehow create or connect the migrated C Partition to a Windows boot partition (sda1?)

Please tell me what steps I have overlooked, and inferior methods listed, thanks!

Answer 1

First, don't use Linux-based tools for Windows migration.

Here is how I would go about doing that (not to mention that I would first upgrade to Windows 10 to ensure hardware compatibility with the new computer):

On the old computer :

• Install in Windows 7 AOMEI Backupper Freeware

• Create a backup of ONLY the Windows partition

• Create AOMEI Bootable CD/DVD/USB Based on Windows PE

• Create Windows 7 boot media

On the new computer :

• Boot AOMEI, format the disk as GPT, create a partition and restore Windows to it, leaving enough of the disk as unallocated (perhaps a few gigabytes)

• Boot Windows and Run a Startup Repair, letting Windows take care of the EFI partition.

• As as last resort do an in-place upgrade on Windows 7.

If this doesn't work out, perhaps it's really time to abandon Windows 7.

Answer 2

Manually converting is quite simple. You need something to clone/restore/unpack your Windows partition and a Windows Setup USB/DVD (any version should do).

1. Create an EFI System Partition in the target drive, at least 100 MB in size. Format it using FAT32.
2. Write your original Windows partition to the target drive
3. Boot Windows Setup using UEFI (important), press Shift+F10 to bring up a Command Prompt, from there use bcdboot to create a new boot configuration: bcdboot C:\Windows
4. Your cloned Windows should now boot.

Answer 3

New computers with UEFI/GPT can boot MBR partitions, you just have to enable "legacy boot" and disable "Secure boot" in the UEFI bios settings. So you can just clone the old hard disk to the new one, enable legacy boot and Windows will boot. This works even if the new hard disk is an NVMe drive and the old is still a mechanical drive. I have successfully done this with Windows 10, but I suspect it will work the same with Windows 7 (or you upgrade first, as recommended above).

When Windows 10 boots successfully, you can upgrade the MBR partition to GPT using the mbr2gpt tool. This will allow you to re-enable safe boot (which is required to later be able to upgrade to Windows 11 or if the new drive is larger than 2TB).