Moving Vista partiton... - Tech Support Forums

mjolnir1134 · October 1st, 2007, 01:01 AM

So, after installing Windows Vista Ultimate on my old n' slow IDE hard drive, I think I'll have Vista share the space in my newer n' faster SATA drive.

What I'm wondering is, what programs or methods shall I have to use to move my Vista partition into my 300GB hard drive with Windows XP using the whole 300GB? All I want to do is make Vista and XP partition-buddies, have XP use 200GB and Vista use the remaining 100GB, moving Vista out of the old hard drive and into the new.

I have PartitionMagic 8.0 and Norton Ghost 12.0 to use, although I'm unsure if PartitionMagic is compatible with Vista (after reading around a little) and I don't quite see any partition-y options in Norton Ghost, unless if someone can guide me to the right way?

Specs:

Windows XP is on the 300GB SATA HDD, listed as "C:\" (Primary Partition)
Windows Vista is on the 80GB IDE HDD, listed as "H:\" (Logical partition)

-Mjolnir

RetroEvolute · October 1st, 2007, 04:52 AM

I definitely recommend using Acronis if you are to be doing any partition work with Vista (PartitionMagic uses a different way of writing the partitions than Vista does and will have trouble reading partitions created by vista and vise versa).

Vista can be tricky to move around from HDD to HDD or even just simple changes the partition or others it works with. After imaging Vista to the 300gb HDD, you may have to rebuild the boot information. Vista no longer uses a boot.ini file. It uses a better, yet, new and harder to alter boot system. None-the-less, if you encounter problems, it's almost guaranteed that you can fix it. It just might take a while, and it just might take some guidance.

Things to keep in mind if you run into problems: Make sure the Vista partition is the primary partition on the primary HDD. Also, the executables, 'BCDEdit.exe', 'Bootmgr.exe', and 'bootcfg (with possible /rebuild parameter)' may come in handy.

Good luck. Let us know if you have any trouble, and... Although the above may sound scary, take a few deep breaths. You may not have to do any of that.