How do I migrate my Win Vist-32 OS to another HD?

Paragon Hard Disk Manager V11 Suite from DL. New user here. I just tried the program today for the 1st time. How do I migrate my OS to a new drive? The Help in the program sounds rather advanced (and confusing) -- all I need to do with this program is to move my OS and installed software to a new & larger drive. I had 2 choices: 1) Migrate Hdisk, and 2) Migrate OS. I chose (1).

Further options had issues to do with RAW, etc, etc. I also chose RAW. Now I have 2 hard drives (the 500G drive now has a partition of the same size as the original c: drive) with what looks like the same OS and all on each drive. Now what do I do to get the 'copied to' drive to be my c: drive? Then how do I safely test the new drive without risking rendering my system unuseable? I would have thought "Migrate" would have done all that -- yet there is no process or procedure to follow that I can find.

My original drive is 75G and the new one is 500G. I think the UI could be a lot more helpful -- it appears as if it were written by someone who already knows axactly how to use the program -- never a good idea. Please assist. I am using Windows Vista 32.

 

Just make a image backup of the 75G drive and restore it into the 500G drive.

Remove the 75G drive from the computer and restart your system.

 

Cincinnatijack has given you the answer on what to do.

The RAW includes every sector in the partition even if it is not used. This option is normally intended to be used if the program can't interpret the file structure to determine what sectors are being used. Most disks have a large amount of free-space these days and if so, this option takes a lot longer and creates larger archives since all sectors are processed.

It is always a good idea to disconnect your original drive when testing a drive that has had the OS restored to it. This is often critical when the new drive has been cloned or has had a raw image restored to it. Windows will see the 2identical disks at boot time and can get confused. After the first successful boot the original can be reconnected if desired.

 

The reason I chose the RAW option was that the other option wanted to copy a 75G drive to a 500G drive and completely fill the 500G drive -- implied by the screen graphics.

If I did what Cincinnatijack states, how does the new drive get renamed to C:? Some other research on this site for a similar problem talked about identifying the new drive in the Bios. Is this necessary?

Also, after I wrote the email, something called a "Boot Manager" (part of the Paragon Suite) came up. I was wondering (never did this), could I create a dual boot configuration -- to 'test' the new drive? Is the "Boot Manager" part of the program's normal process, or did this happen accidently as I was perusing the program?

Thanks for all assistance.

 

I used the "Migrate" option. How does this differ from the "Backup" you are suggesting?

 

Backup: During backup procedure an archive file is created which contains an exact image of a partition or a complete disk. All files and folders as well as all information about the partition structure are stored in this archive.

Copy: During partition copy procedure a new complete identical partition will be created on destination media. During hard disk copy procedure all partition structure of source disk will be recreated on the destination disk and all data from source drive will be copied to the destination drive.

If you use the backup option, you will have a backup image of the drive to be used again at a later time. The copy procedure is commonly used for migration to new hard disks or for duplication whole PC systems and if you don't have the media to store a backup image. Note that during copy procedure all data on destination drive will be overwritten in case if it is not empty.

The only Migrate operation that I know is to Migrate OS from HD to SSD or large HD into smaller HD or partition.

 

I don't know, I do have HDM but haven't really played with it. I am also a relatively new Paragon user and most of my experience has been with Backup and Recovery Home.

In B&R if you work through the Restore Wizard and get to the a Preview Changes screen, the option to resize the partitions is presented so you can limit the size at this screen. I imagine HDM is similar.

 

Reply to c-jack with screenshot attached

Please check the attachment. It shows two Migrate options. Other than the screen descriptions and the cryptic Help file, I have no real depth of information as to what these menu items do, exactly. I wish I did.

 

Yes you are right, the copy option works only if you want to copy HDD to new hard drive of the same or larger size.
The migration option may give you an option to copy into smaller HDD drive, this is only a guess because I never used this option.

 

I just had a look at the HDM user manual. Start at about page 217 - System Migration Scenarios.

My understanding:
The migrate OS function to SSD or HDD is intended to just find and move the OS partition and not the others. The reason for this is that typical HDs are big and typical SSDs aren't so they often only get used for the OS and the rest of the stuff won't fit anyway. This tool automates the moving of the one partition and presumably will align it to a boundary so the SSD will perform at its rated speed.

The Hard Disk Migration is a general migration tool that will do all the partitions on the HD. It really creates a clone of the original disk but will let you expand the partitions proportionally - the idea is that most new disks are bigger than the old disks.