While I know it's possible to migrate settings etc to another PC, I would like to see a method of migrating the entire windows installation to another drive without the other drive having to be an equal size. For example, a boot drive starts to become unstable so you want to put in another drive and migrate Windows to it. Due to costs and constantly updating tech, an equal size drive may not always be possible. Alternatively, one may want to migrate Windows to a SSD instead of a HDD but again, due to costs, it may not be possible to get a SSD the same size. You can do it using imaging software or windows own imaging but either you have to resize the existing HDD to move to a smaller disk or put up with your new drive being partitioned into 2 parts if the target disk is larger. With a SSD, it's essential to resize the Windows partition since a SSD will undoubtedly be smaller. This can pose a problem since some system files are scattered across the disk and even a defrag doesn't help. Ie: My 465gb HDD with only 70gb used will only resize down to 256gb but my SSD is only 111gb. I have many online games that I can move from one drive to another and run from the EXE without reinstalling or copy and paste the entire directory to another PC and run without installing again. Considering the most users would rename the new drive to C, meaning that nothing is disturbed on the C drive, I don't see why this can't be done with Windows. The parts that simply must be altered like the boot sectors etc could easily be done by the Windows migration tool, this could include the renaming of the new drive to C and renaming the old drive to the next available letter. An auto-reboot would then boot from the new drive and update drive letters etc. Since the old drives boot sector no longer allows it to boot and the new drive has the only active partition, this may also require Windows to alter the BIOS to boot from the new disk instead. Now we have a way to migrate Windows to a new drive automatically and without requiring imaging or equal sized disks. After the successful reboot, Windows can immediately delete the old Windows installation, if unsuccessful, the old disk can be re-instated and the new one formatted to allow the user to try again. To avoid unlawful copying, Windows can easily disallow the new installation if the old copy cannot be deleted by the migration software, for example, the user has removed the old disk before the reboot takes place. The user can then copy additional directories that Windows won't copy from the old drive to the new one providing there is enough space for them. When done, essentially, the new drive will act just as the old one did. Windows should migrate itself along with any installed programs in Program Files, My Documents etc and other windows specific directories onto the new boot drive if there is enough room. Only non Windows specific directories should remain on the old hard disk.

Cloning a Hard Disk Windows MVP 2010-11, XP, Vista, 7. Expanding into Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server, SharePoint, Cloud, Virtualization etc. etc. Hardcore Games, Legendary is the only Way to Play Developer | Windows IT | Chess | Economics | Vegan Advocate | PC Reviews