How to "reorganize" Hard Disk

Hi,

I have the following requirement:

I started with my hard disk completely assigned to Windows Vista.

Disk Layout: [MBR][Vista partion]

To check out Windows 7 I did the following

- used Disk Director to reduce the Vista partion size
- installed Windows 7 RC1 on a new partition

New Layout: [MBR][Vista partion][Windows 7 partition]

I'm happy with Windows 7 and now want to completely "switch over", but w/o reinstall.

I'm thinking of

- Make an image backup of the Windows 7 partition
- Use the "Stand Alone" version of Acronis to restore the image

During Restore I want to assign the complete hard disk to Windows 7.

Final Disk Layout: [MBR][Windows 7 partition]

- Will this work or do I have to expect problems (MBR, ...)?
- Are there step-by-step intructions for this scenario?


Thanks

/BB

 

You could probably use a partition editor to just remove the xp partition and assign the space to to the win7 partition.

To do it the way you describe, you ned to delete the xp partiton first before you can assing it's space with ATI to the win7 partition when restoring the win7 partition.

 

BerndB:

Do not delete the Vista partition since that's the partition containing boot files for both Vista and Windows 7. In order to do what you want you will first need to copy the boot files from the Vista partition to the Win7 partition and get the PC to boot directly into Windows 7. Then you can create an image of the Win7 partition and restore it to the entire disk.

Here is an article by forum member MudCrab but it is written to allow a dual-boot XP/Vista system to be separated. The concept is the same when separating a dual-boot Vista/Win7 system but you would skip parts 4, 6, and 7 of the article. The end objective is to get Win7 independently booting on its own. Once accomplished, make an image of the Win7 partition and restore it to the entire disk.