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Migrating only SOME partitions to an SSD

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I have a Seagate Momentus 500GB drive in my laptop, partitioned as follows:

C (20GB): Win XP Pro SP2
D: (10GB) Additional Programs loaded on Win XP
E: (35GB) Window 7 Pro SP1
F: (30GB) Additional programs loaded on Windows 7
G: (30GB) Data (My Documents etc.)
H: (30GB) Pagefile for Windows 7, and Additional data
I: (95GB) Additional data
J: (175GB) Additional data

I'm getting a 120GB SSD, which I want to install as my main drive. The Seagate wil be installed as a second drive in the optical bay of my laptop.

Here's the thing -- I want to install just Windows 7 on the SSD (no Win XP partitions), i.e., just the E: and F: partitions of my existing HDD (which would then become the new C: and D: partitions of the SSD), and leave the rest of the SSD for an additional partition for data (which then becomes the new E: partition, on the SSD). So I would end up with --
C:, D: E: on the SSD (with C: having Win 7, D: having Win 7: additional progs, and E: for data)
F: G:.. and so on on my Seagate HDD.

My question -- what's the best way of going about this, *without* doing a fresh install of Windows 7? (I have Acronis Trueimage 2012, and also Acronis Disk Director Home 2011.) Can this even be done, or would there be a complete mishmash of drive letters after? Would my programs work, given that all the drive letters are changing? And what about this SSD alignment problem?

Been through several forums, and I'm now even more confused than I was when I started...would appreciate all and any help!

Thanks

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Usually there is a hidden reserved partitin about 100MB that contains the w7 bootmanger. With some installations of w7, the bootmanager might be forced onto the same disk as the rest of the system files. You should b able to see the reserved partitin in ATI. You need to backup and restore both C: and the reserved partiton and when you restore, the reserved partition much be marked active. IF the new drive is a diff size, then don't check the Track0/MBR box on the recovery screen -- this will then let you restore the partitons separately and adjsut the size -- don't change the size of the reserved partition. Then restore Track0/MBR as a last step. remove the old disk and install new one and boot up.

I bleive this is also covered in the userguide

http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/

You can restore the c: volume to any size big enough to hold it and then leave the rest of the disk unallocated. You can allocate the unallocated portion later. Once you boot up from the ssd. Then you can install the other hdisk (the original one in a new location, remove the C: partitin and allocate the newly unallocated space.

You can do partition allocation stuff with w disk manager or disk director or with gparted (which is free).

Installed program may have trouble with moving from F: to D: if they somewhat recorded in the registry that some of their parts were on F: . Probably it would be better to preserve partition letters.

Thanks for the reply.

I opened ATI, but didn't find any 100MB reserved partition -- it just shows 'C: D: E: F: G: H: I: J: Acronis Secure Zone'. So, then I assume the bootmanager is on the same disk as the Windows 7 system files, i.e., E:? Or on C: (Win XP, which was installed first before the dual-boot arrangement into Windows 7 later)?

The new drive *will* be a different size (I'm thinking about a 128GB SSD) from the original drive, but the partitions I just want to restore on to the SSD are definitely smaller than the SSD capacity, so that's not a problem.

"Installed program may have trouble with moving from F: to D: if they somewhat recorded in the registry that some of their parts were on F: . Probably it would be better to preserve partition letters."

Yes, I'm worried about that too...this may be a stupid question, but is there any way to fix this without fudging around with the partition letters? Since I'll be eliminating Win XP, I would like to start with new drive as C: ...I guess it's a mental thing ;-)

Thanks for responding.

Rajeev,

There is no simple answer here. I am thinking that your operation is risky and if I were in your shoes, I would start from a bare metal configuration and reinstall the system the way I want.
In this new configuration, for example, I would consider running XP from a virtual machine on the Win 7 OS host.

Yeah, Pat, I'm beginning to think the same...oh well, it was worth a try (thinking that someone just might have a magic solution!)

Thanks anyway