Moving partitions around

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HectorGomez

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Oct 4, 2004
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I have 4 HDDs in my tower - 2 of which are still IDE drives and they're 120 and 160 GB. The other 2 are SATA and are 250GB and 500GB. One of these IDE drives has my windows partition. I was HIGHLY considering dumping the IDE drives completely and going onto a 1TB SATA instead, and consolidating the 120, 160, and 250GB drives into the 1TB one.

I have not done it, but here's what I THINK would work. If anyone has any other suggestions/thoughts on the matter, I'd appreciate the input!

  1. Install the hard drive as needed to get it to be recognized
  2. Boot into either the GParted CD, or a linux live CD
  3. COPY the partitions from each individual drive onto the larger one
  4. Physically remove the old drives which now have been copied over to the new drive
  5. Boot from an XP or the Ubuntu install CD and re-write the Master Boot Record on the new large drive

I am aware that accessing data across the partitions is much slower than accessing the data across physically separate drives - these drives are fairly old and slow though, so I doubt that I'd see a big performance hit though. This isn't for a performance increase - it's to consolidate 3 drives into 1, cut back on power slightly, better airflow, and get those nasty IDE cables out of my case.

Has anyone done something like this before? I know that re-installing would be the best option, but I don't exactly have an entire day to re-install all of my applications, games, drivers, configurations, etc.
 
Your best bet is probably to image the drive using an imaging software and copy everything over that way.
 
As stated, it is better to use an imaging tool. They all can do cloning as well.
Acronis True Image Home is a good tool.
If any of those drives is Seagate, you can use DiscWizard, which is the same tool for free.

You clone your old Windows partition to your new drive.
Disconnect the old drives and make sure you can boot to the cloned drive.

Now, take care of transferring the data, which is best to do while booted into
Windows.
 
You don't need imaging software, doing a direct partition copy with GParted will do the job fine. Since you'll be copying the partitions from 3 drives to one, it won't hurt anything to try since the original drives won't be modified.

I've done this with other systems many times using GParted. The most complicated being upgrading the drives in my HTPC. It originally had two 80GB drives, the OS (XPMCE) on one, and a second 80GB drive for extra storage. I have MCE set to record to the 2nd drive, and I copy recorded shows to the primary drive if it starts running low. I installed a 120GB HD to replace the 2nd 80GB (the case only has room for two drives). I used GParted to copy the partition and re-sized it to fill the drive.

Then later I needed more space, so I got a 200GB HD for it. I copied the 80GB OS partition to an external drive, then copied the 120GB partition to the the 200GB drive and re-sized to to fill the drive. Then I copied the 80GB OS partition from the external drive to the 120GB drive, booted it up to make sure it worked, then re-sized it to fill the drive.

A word of advice, if you plan to re-size your system partition after copying it to the new drive, you have to remember to boot it first before resizing it to make sure it works. Also, if you're using NTFS and you run chkdsk on the drive/partition, reboot it twice before trying to copy it or it will corrupt, I learned that the hard way. I don't remember the exact details, but after running chkdsk it switches something off on the NTFS file system which doesn't get switched back on until the next boot, and it causes the copy of the partition to become corrupt.

If your using XP, it will simply run a disk check after resizing a partition and then go about it's business like nothing changed. If you're using Vista you may get an error after resizing the system partition. It's an easy fix though, see this link on how to fix it.
 
Unless you run GParted from Linux, you will have to boot to its Live CD.
While running GParted from Live CD, your computer will be useless (no browsing, no email, no nothing).

That is why I use GParted only when I have to.
You can copy a data partition from inside Windows. You do not have to do it through GParted.
 
MrF said:
Unless you run GParted from Linux, you will have to boot to its Live CD.
While running GParted from Live CD, your computer will be useless (no browsing, no email, no nothing).

That is why I use GParted only when I have to.
Click to expand...

WTF? You can't live without internet and email long enough to copy a partition from one drive to another? :rolleyes: You really shouldn't be using anything on the partition you're copying, especially your system partition, it's just not worth the risk. It doesn't take that long, and there's plenty of other things to do. I suggest you check all the doors in your house, one of them leads to this wonderful place called the outside world.

I can live without my computer while it copies. If have to use the internet, I can always use my netbook. If you absolutely can't stand to be without internet while copying a partition, then get the Ubuntu LiveCD. It contains GParted, and then you can use the internet while it works.
 
jimnms said:
WTF? You can't live without internet and email long enough to copy a partition from one drive to another?
Click to expand...

I never said I couldn't.
You can clean up your kitchen floor with a tooth brush! But, there are other ways.

There is no advantage in copying data from one partition to another using GParted instead of a simple copy and paste in Windows.

You really shouldn't be using anything on the partition you're copying, especially your system partition
Click to expand...
My post was clearly about a data partition, not a system partition.
 
Detach all the old drives (all of them) and put the 1TB drive in, do a clean installation of your OS on a partition size of your choosing (and create a partition or partitions as required to fill out the space). When that's done, reconnect the other drives as required and copy the files over. Couple of hours, tops, and most certainly not a whole damned day.

Simple.

If you want to keep the current OS installation, you'll need something that can do a proper drive-to-drive copy of the OS and related files from the old OS drive/partition to the new drive/partition.

Obviously, you cannot just copy/paste or drag and drop this stuff and have it work. You need software designed to do this task, aka drive-to-drive copy software, aka cloning - but not necessarily considered imaging software. Imaging software's primary purpose is to create an image file someplace, where you can then store, transport, modify, etc that file as required and restore it at a later time.

Drive-to-drive copy software is similar to imaging but not the same process as you're doing the copy from source to target in real-time, with no storing of data externally (some other location, etc).

But if this is a simple data move, the first suggestion I made above would be the most recommended course of action. And 120/160GB drives ain't slow, they'll easily pump out 40-50MB/s for these transfers, that's quite fast and works fine and there really isn't any other way to do it.

Give yourself a clean slate, on the 1TB, set it up as you wish with partitions, then attach the old drives one at a time and move that old shit over as required.
 
Joe Average said:
Detach all the old drives (all of them) and put the 1TB drive in, do a clean installation of your OS on a partition size of your choosing (and create a partition or partitions as required to fill out the space). When that's done, reconnect the other drives as required and copy the files over. Couple of hours, tops, and most certainly not a whole damned day.
Click to expand...

Not everyone needs or wants to reinstall their OS and all of their programs. Personally, I try to avoid it at all costs because it's not "a couple of hours, tops" operation, it takes me a day or two to get everything re-installed and set up.

I have not re-installed XP on my current system since November of 2005, and I have upgraded the HDs three times. Each time I used GParted to copy the system partition over.

Joe Average said:
If you want to keep the current OS installation, you'll need something that can do a proper drive-to-drive copy of the OS and related files from the old OS drive/partition to the new drive/partition.

Obviously, you cannot just copy/paste or drag and drop this stuff and have it work. You need software designed to do this task, aka drive-to-drive copy software, aka cloning - but not necessarily considered imaging software.
Click to expand...

GParted can do this, and it's free. It will copy the OS partition from one drive to the other, and your OS won't know the difference afterwords unless you re-size it. Like I said, I've done this many times, on my own systems and others when upgrading drives. It's much quicker and easier just to copy the partition from the old drive to the new one and re-size it with GParted than to reinstall the OS, reinstall and setup all programs and copy your data over.

From what I understand, the OP has 4 drives and wants to replace them with one. He specifically mentioned copying the partitions from the old drive to the new one, so I presume he wants to keep the same drive letter's for program compatibility. If that is the case, use GParted to copy and re-size (if needed) each partition to the new drive.

If you want to consolidate the four drives into one big drive/partition, use GParted to copy the OS partition to the new drive, re-size it to fill out the drive, then you can copy/paste the files from the old drives to the new one. Before doing a copy and paste from within Windows, make sure to set it to show hidden and system files or you might miss any hidden/system files in the root of the old drive. A more thorough way would be to use the command line xcopy, or better yet get xxcopy. Both can copy hidden and system files (as long as they aren't locked by Windows).
 
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