Copying System Partitions without formatting disk

psychic_teabag

Have you considered gparted ? I know you said you didn't want linux tools, but it can run as a fully-contained boot from cd, so you need never know it's running linux. It's just a friendly GUI that you use to move partitions around.

I believe it can copy partitions between drives, as well as move them about within a drive. Plus resizing, etc. It's certainly my go-to tool for this sort of thing.

http://gparted.org/livecd.php

RandomQ

Thanks for suggestions, here is progress report.

I figured that all I need to prove Macrium works is to copy the 4 recovery partitions and the Windows partitions (it is dual boot).

Macrium is definately not a replacement for Mini Partition Wizard Tool, it is a backup program that copies to images (so requires even more space), luckily these are not massive partitions.

At first I tried backing up P1 and then restoring it, seemed to work and descriptors in Mini Partition Wizard tool seemed identical so quite hopeful at that point. So I moved onto P4 having made space for it, but for some reason it made a partition inaccessible, the partition it nuked was where I was copying the partitions. I was just glad it did not nuke one of my needed partitions.

Macrium has one of the most unfriendly graphical interfaces, this makes it very easy to make a mistake, so I decided to only use it where I needed to, on the system partitions.

Also I found that with Macrium you are better to create empty partitions in Mini Partition Wizard Tool where you want the restore to go, you tell it to delete this as it restores and you should get a warning to verify it will be overwriting that empty partition. This ensures you restore where you want to and avoids it nuking your existing partitions. It is the opposite of Mini Partition Wizard tool which allows you to select an empty space and drag a slider to decide exactly where you want it.

So overnight I had Mini Partition Wizard Tool move the 2g disk partitions about, I had it move along the existing partitions, create all the empty ones and finally copy the Windows ones. All was done except for drive C which required a reboot because you can't pull the rug you are standing on.

I then restored the 4 OEM recovery partitions to the empty partitions and all has gone well so far.

Next I will open PC put 2g on sata and use EasyBCD to make it able to boot from both, then recopy Win Partitions.

Then I will swap 2g for 1g and hopefully it will boot and offer same options in BCD, if not I will add them.

I will report back later.

Hopefully new disk will arrive next week for proper backup of these systems, will then look as a new NAS.

Thanks to all for help

Heedtheadvice

Great that you are making progress.

Yes Reflect and partition manager are different beasts but to a certain extent compliment each other.

Must say I would have waited for the new drive and backup first!

Can you tell us, given your earlier report, what the time scales were for cloning the partitions?