Howto migrate the system partion to another disk on Windows 2008 enterprise

Question

I'm trying to move a windows 2008 system partition, on an older 1/2T drive to a new partition on a new drive. What would be the best way of doing it. I've had a look at the bcd registry using bcdedit to see if anything needds changed, and also looked at storage managed, and even though the cloner has done its work, the storage manager still reports that the old partition is Active, Primary, Boot, File Active, Crash Dump while the new is only Active, Primary. Do I need to use bcdedit to mark the new disk, although I thought the cloner would have done the whole jobs.

Any help would be appreciated. Bob.

Well, I went ahead and had a mess about with the bcd store, after disconnecting the old c: drive and running easybcd. Ended up removing the windows 2003 dual boot option as well, ending with an unusable computer. Had to rebuild win 2k8 from scratch. Now

I have a new question. What settings to you use to add a legacy win 2003 config to the bcd store to enable the dual boot option. I tried to use easybcd, but I think it is a crock and it added a legacy boot.ini option which I don't think was their in the first place. I think it was {bootmgr}. Any help would be appreciated, as I am completely in the dark.

Bob.

Answer 1

We've been using Acronis, no problems. It clones drives just fine.

J.Ja

Answer 2

Do you mean you've moved \Windows off the C: partition to another partition (D, E: or whatever) but left C: in place? If so C: does still need to be the boot partition as your PC BIOS will attempt to boot from it; the Windows loader will then start Windows from whatever other partition it's on.

JR

Answer to scope-creep:

Run, don't walk, to www.drivesnapshot.de and download an evaluation version of snapshot. Start with just your old disk in and snapshot the partition(s) to some external storage e.g. network or at a pinch USB drive. Now take out the old disk and replace it with the new blank one. Boot off some suitable boot CD like Bart or WinPE (see http://www.ratsauce.co.uk/notablog/WinPECD.asp). Now run snapshot and load the snapshot from step 1 from the network or USB disk, and burn it onto the new disk. Snapshot will create the partition for you, and you can increase it to fill the new disk if you want. After restoring the snapshot onto the new disk reboot and you're done. At your convenience put in the old disk that can now become a drive D: or whatever.

Answer 3

The cloner should have marked it as a boot disk for you. Depending on the software you used, you may need to verify the options during the copy.

Did you copy just the partition or clone the whole drive? Maybe the master boor record (MBR) isn't correct? Here are 2 links to try. The Vista directions should work in 2008.

Restore boot manager when it is missing or compressed

How to fix MBR in Windows XP and Vista

Answer 4

So, you're removing the old disk that the "C:" "drive" resided on after disk-cloning the old disk to the new disk?

If so, you may be missing the boot sector and / or boot manager on the new disk. As long as you have a good "old drive" to fall back on, you can experiment a bit on the new destination disk. I'd try the following.

• Boot the W2K8 setup DVD with the new disk connected and ready to do (and the old disk physically disconnected from the system to keep it safe)
• Open a command prompt through "Repair your Computer"
• Do a "dir C:" and verify that you're seeing the contents of what you'd like to be the "C:" "drive". If you're not, you may need to use "Diskpart" to assign a drive-letter to the proper volume.
• Assuming you are seeing the proper contents, execute a "bootrec /RebuildBCD" to write down a new boot sector.

See how that works for you.

More information about "BootRec" is available at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392