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I'm almost certain my "new" hard drive I bought last August is the cause of constant BSODs. I've re installed Windows and they keep happening, so...

I have a smaller hard drive (320gb vs the "new" 750gb) that is currently in an external USB enclosure. I want to copy my current Windows installation (which includes everything, including my files) onto this hard drive. This 750gb drive only has 120gb used on it at the moment. The partition is larger than 320gb, though.

So, how would I go about doing this? Should I shrink the partition down to <320gb then copy partitions? What program should I use (to copy)? How can I be sure that, since this drive (750gb one) obviously has problems, it won't screw up during the copying procedure? Oooor should I just backup my important data and do a fresh Windows install? (please note, I really don't want to to the latter. I'm not 100% sure it is the hard drive, as it had passed all of the SeaTools tests. I have no extra RAM to test out the RAM with, but it shouldn't be the RAM, as it has passed memtest to 17+ passes.)

In case it matters, this is a laptop, so >1 hard drive in the computer at once is not possible (besides USB).

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    Backup your data and do a fresh install.
    – goblinbox
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 21:30
  • What @goblinbox said. You could also shrink the partition using the built-in Disk Management software (I recommend a defrag first), and then use your favourite disk image tool, but if it's a problem with your installation, you're not winning anything.
    – user3463
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 22:07

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To answer your first two questions you can use PING to copy the partition over to the 320 GB drive and it will give you options to resize it. (I've had PING crash during resizing, so you can also use GParted). I don't know if the bad drive will cause errors during the transfer, but the PING forum should be able to tell you. PING can be ran from a CD (or USB flash drive, see Universal USB Installer) without booting off the bad drive, so you won't have to worry about Windows crashing. The copied partition will be in a format that PING can read, so if you want to set it up on the 320 GB drive as a partition, you will have to use PING again to restore it to whatever media you want. You can also use ImageX in the WinPE tool set to do (almost) the same thing, but it's quite a bit more complicated.

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  • After talking on the phone to Seagate, I've found out that the problem is not the Hard Drive, but is the RAM instead. Thanks for the ideas though, I'm sure I'll be able to use them in case the need arises. :)
    – robot85
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 23:27

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