How to Clone Win7 from 512b sectors to 4096b sectors

Question

I'm using a new Thinkpad and I'm trying to upgrade the drive from a 250GB to a 640GB. I grabbed a WD Scorpio Blue and a ByteCC USB/SATA adapter.

First I tried booting Linux and doing a dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdd bs=4M . This failed. The partition table was invalid after it was written. Normally this would work, so I figure it has to do with the number of sectors on the disk.

I then tried manually creating the partitions and doing a dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdd1 bs=4M, etc, etc. This resulted in something which was not bootable, and reading on "sector alignment" and stuff, I figure it's not the optimal way to do things.

So I went to try to do it the Windows way. I tried the WD edition of Acronis. It failed spectacularly, telling me that the target disk was smaller than the source (which in terms of sector count is probably correct)

After some searching, I then tried Casper. Casper seems to do a good job duplicating the disk, but it won't boot. So I created a Windows System Repair CD and booted...

The Windows System repair CD doesn't see the filesystems... it thinks the disks are "RAW" and need to be formatted.

Booting back on the 250 with the 640 mounted externally, chkdsk comes up clean. Everything is good. The filesystems look okay. The only thing I can think is weird is that Windows is insistent on assigning a drive letter to the partitions, which is a bit frustrating.

I'm at a loss as to how to troubleshoot this from here. It might be a simple Windows 7 boot thing at this point, so maybe somebody here has a much better idea of what I can try next. Any ideas?

Solution

You are correct in that you need to do the cloning at the filesystem level, because you can't do it at a lower level (i.e. using dd) if the disk geometry is completely different; but you must make sure to use a cloning utility which is compatible with Windows 7, as it uses NTFS in a compeltely different way than previous Windows system (lots of junction points).

Also, it's quite common for Windows 7 systems to have a small boot partition before the main system one, which actually is the bootable one and contains the Windows boot mnager; if this is the case, then you also need to carry that partition on to the new disk, as it's needed to properly boot the system. You normally don't see it in Windows Explorer because it doesn't have any drive letter assiged, so you can only see it in the Disk Management snap-in.

Last but not least, you need to have a valid bootable MBR on your new disk and correctly flag as active the bootable partition, otherwise the partition layout might be perfectly fine, but the system won't boot.

What I suggest is:

1. Have a good look at your disk and check whether you have that small boot partition at the beginning of your current disk.
2. Connect the new disk to a running system and have Windows initialize it; then partition and format it from Windows, creating one or two partitions depending on the layout of the original disk.
3. Make sure the proper partition is flagged as active in the new disk; that would be the small boot partition if you have it, or the main system partition otherwise. Just be sure to have the new disk configured eactly as the old one.
4. Use a cloning tool compatible with Windows 7 to clone the disk; if you have the small boot partition, make sure to clone that, too. Clone them on the corresponding partitions on the new disk.
5. Now you should be able to boot your new disk. If it still doesn't work, come back here and tell us what error you are getting.

Comments

[Ambroz Bizjak]

You are wrong in saying that you can't "clone" a disk. A disk can be cloned by doing a raw byte-copy to another disk, as long as the new disk is large enough. After the copy, the partition table and filesystems on the new disk will be fine - you can easily mount them.

[mgjk]

All that stuff applies and is good advice. The error was "Missing Operating System". I think I found the problem... knock on wood... something is wrong with the USB - SATA device. I put the 640G drive in the system and booted Linux... it was unreadable. I then rebooted with the 640 on the USB and it was perfectly readable. So now I'm using Acronis with the 250G drive on the USB and the 640 internal. Acronis isn't complaining anymore. I'll know in 4 hours or so if it worked.

[mgjk]

It looks like it might be the USB enclosure getting confused with the 640GB drive. I'll know in a few hours. I tried the Acronis boot media with the 250 External and the 640 Internal. It's not complaining anymore. See the other comment thread for how I determined the USB device might be messed. Wish me luck...

[mgjk]

The system booted to a blinking cursor, then I ran the MS utilities on the recovery CD. At least it recognized that I had a Windows distro. It failed a couple times and tried to assign D: to my C:, but mysteriously, after a couple attempts, it worked. The root cause here had something to do with the USB enclosure and maybe how it handled the 4096b sectors. It's very strange to me that a 4096b sector drive written in the enclosure, couldn't be read when SATA connected. But it's just a guess, it could be the ByteCC USB thing not working with the Scorpio... no idea. It works now. Yay!