PM12 Cannot move C: (OS partition) to second hard drive without destroying all data?

Backstory: I used earlier versions of PM a long time ago - maybe that is the reason for my confusion.

This was what I wanted to do: Exchange my current SSD for a bigger one.
The bad news: For space reasons I cannot connect my new (bigger) SSD, and have my old SSD and my hard drive connected at the same time.

So, my current partition setup is this:
SSD: Bootable MBR + OS partition C:
Hard disk: Data partition E:
(Optical drive: D: )

What I intended to do was this:
1. Shrink and move E: to the end of the hard drive.
2. Create a new partition at the start of the hard drive.
3. Copy my OS partition (i.e. the complete content of C: ) to the hard drive.
4. Make the hard drive bootable.
5. Unplug the old SSD, plugin the new SSD
6. Migrate the OS partition from the hard drive to the new SSD.

Step 1, shrinking and moving up E: was no problem.
Step 2, creating a new (physical, non-virtual) partition in the now empty space at the start of the hard drive also worked fine.
Step 3, copy the OS partition C: onto the newly created partition on the hard drive, also went well. Although I was confused that the copy was done while the OS was running; I had expected it to happen outside of the OS after a reboot, like the partitioning tasks.

Here I am stuck at Step 4 - making the hard drive bootable.

PM12 has an option "Copying Tasks -> Migrate OS", but according to the warning I got, all data on the hard drive would be erased by that action. Not just the data on the target partition, but all data on the hard drive - which obviously would be bad for my data partition E:

How can I safely move my Windows 7 OS partition from the SSD to the harddrive, without losing the hard disk's content?
And make Windows 7 bootable on the hard drive?
Maybe I was too naive in step 3 (copying the OS partition to the hard drive), and making the hard drive bootable would not help me anyway?

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

Late reply, but....

Could you please explain what exact operation is "Step 3, copy the OS partition C: onto the newly created partition on the hard drive, also went well." ? Is it simple copy files or copy partition from PM12?

Anyway, I'd suggest to use backup->restore cycle instead of copy.
PM12 Home has basic backup-restore functionality included. So you can migrate your system as follows:
1) Create recovery media (check if its' bootable before running next steps)
2) backup your old SSD to E:
3) disconnect old SSD, connect new SSD
4) boot from recovery media, restore backup to clean SSD from E:
Perform Boot correction (BootCorrector wizard in recovery media) if needed.

That's it.


For the current situation: if you used partition copy wizard to clone your old SSD system partition to data drive , you need to:
- create Recovery media, boot from it
- run BootCorrector wizard, select search for Windows installation to correct , and perform correction for your copied Windows.
After restart, enter BIOS and make sure that data drive is the first boot device.
Then boot from it. If Windows copy on data drive is correct - it will boot up.

Otherwise, please provide more details on your situation and operations you want \ can use.

 

Thanks a lot for your extensive and detailed reply! I appreciate very much the time you took to answer to my cry for help.

No luck for me, unfortunately.

The good news is:
I created a boot DVD, and it is bootable.
And I succeeded in creating a backup on the hard drive, thanks for that idea.

The bad news is:
The problem is with the boot disk: It does not provide any restore functionality I can see.

This is what I see when I boot from the boot disk:

• Normal Mode
• Safe Mode
• Low-Graphics Safe Mode
• Hard disk 0 MBR
• Find OSes on your hard disks

This happens when I choose any of these options:

Normal Mode:
Reboots the PC from DVD and shows the same menu again

Safe Mode:
Gives me the display below, DVD drive stops spinning 45 seconds later, then the system hangs in this state:
_
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Low-Graphics Safe Mode:
Exactly the same behavior as Normal Mode

Hard disk 0 MBR:
Boots Windows 7 from the (old) SSD, as expected.
If I exchanged the old for the new (empty) SSD, I expect this option would not appear.

Find OSes on your hard disks
This will blank the screen and after a few seconds replace the "Find OSes on your hard disks" with:
Vista/2008/7/8 "System-res"
Vista/2008/7/8 "System-res"
Which I suppose means that there are two system images from Windows 7 safe pints on my hard disk. Or it could mean that PM12 detected that I actually have two physical hard drives which are combined into one by the BIOS via RAID.

The backup I stored on the hard drive does not appear in this menu, nor does a BootCorrector wizard. I suppose that the Normal, Safe or Low-Res options are supposed to provide a restore function - which does not work, unfortunately.

Any idea if there is an alternative way to restore the backup to new empty SSD?

Thanks a lot!

 

It appears that Recovery media fails to start full recovery environment.

Restore scenario with some screenshots is described in User Manual (http://download.paragon-software.com/doc/PM12Home_en_manual.pdf).

Please try to create recovery media on flash drive (note: it will be formatted before Recovery media creation, so copy all data from it somewhere else). Then enable booting from USB first in BIOS and check if Normal mode boots.

If it doesn't work, let me know and we will find more complex way for migration %)

BTW Is it possible to connect new SSD via some SATA-to-USB hub \ dock ?

 

Ah, good idea re the flash drive.

I will see if SATA-to-USB is an option. My, have we come a log way since IDE.

 

Thanks a lot, Mech_An, for the SATA-to-USB idea.

It was quite easy to copy the old SSD onto the new one with this adapter, and after I plugged the new SSD into the old's plugs, I just had to tell the BIOS what had happened, and Windows required another reboot.

Thanks so much for your help!

 

You're welcome