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Windows 7 Old Hard-Drive Replacement Question

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When I first installed Windows 7, I left the Windows XP hard-drive in my system. They used to be dual-boot and I managed to get rid of that dual boot menu but now they seem to be tied to each other some how. Since the C:\ drive is the older of the two drives, I figured I'd test out ATI 2013 Plus Pack by moving everything to the D:\ drive. But I'm a little worried about the dual-boot issue and whether I'd just be copying the problem to the new drive.

So here's the question: should I use Acronis to completely copy the C:\ drive to the D:\ drive and then reinstall Win 7 if it still has a problem? Or reinstall Win 7 first and then how would I get all my data and programs over to the new drive without taking the old Win 7 files?

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As you installed Windows 7 on an XP computer, the installer is using the windows XP boot records. If you get rid of the disk where XP is installed, you will have to repair your computer using the Windows 7 installation CD, or you can use EasyBCD.
To repair the startup, you can try with the builtin startup repair:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

If this doesn't work, you will have to use the commands here:
http://pcsupporthub.com/3645/repair-windows-7-master-boot-record/

I'm going to tackle the desktop this weekend. In the event that I can't get it fixed and have to reinstall Windows 7, will I be able to use my Acronis backups to restore the rest of the c:\ drive? (program files and such)

So long as your 'backup' is a complete disk image, you can recover the complete disk or individual partitions, if everything goes wrong.

It is advisable to ensure your recovery CD can boot your PC and see all your drives, as it will be from this environment you will perform any recovery if needed.

Why is everybody ignoring the fact that I need to reinstall windows 7? I can't do a complete recovery because win 7 on my old drive won't boot.

I wasn't ignoring the fact your W7 install won't boot, I was taking into account that you probably don't want to end up with a system that doesn't boot at all, if your reinstall went wrong. I assumed you would want to at least be able to boot into your XP installation. To be absolutely sure you have all the information you require including MBR, disk signature and any booting files, you need to have a complete disk image, as only that image will contain everything for certain

I would make a complete disk image of both drives - that is an image per drive, that way you have a means of at least recovering data, as you would from within a version of Windows, be able to mount the partition and copy data and installers (though not programs).

I assume that when booted originally from either W7 or XP they reported themselves as 'C', and that your current drive designated 'D' only shows as 'D' under XP. If the OS' are on two separate drives I'm not sure why you want to 'copy' the W7 to the XP drive, I'm not sure what you are hoping to achieve.

What OS is on what drive at the moment?

C: has win 7, d: has XP. Neither drive boots in isolation. Xp hasn't booted in years. I do have backups of both drives but other than restoring data, I'm not sure how much use they'll be. What I'm trying to do I'd get win 7 to boot correctly from the c: drive and remove the d: drive. All this is leading up to replacing my big data drive which failed. Fortunately, I have backups of that.

Sorry for being cranky last night.