how do i clone windows 7 or move it to a new harddrive?  

Acronis Disk Image is my favorite but Norton's Ghost will work also. Both of these are pay-for software; I'm not sure if there are any free apps out there for this.

Format it.

Open CMD, and type 'format X:'.

X = drive letter.

Hello, fellow cloner.
Ghost 15 is supposed to support Win 7. It also supports cold-imaging from CD so you don't have to install it. I use a partitioned, multi-boot system and I have had limited success (Win 7-64) with Ghost 11 but I needed to get a BCD product to convince things to boot correctly again. The new VistaBootPro supports Win7 just fine, but it's also non-free (though cheap). I'm sure if my kung-fu was better I could figure it out myself but it ain't.
Newegg just had Ghost 15 on sale for $20 for Black Friday. They still have it listed at that price so I asked for notification. Should be back on the 11th or so. I hope thay still keep the price. Everybody else I can find, it's at least $50. Good luck.

El-Crap-ola, After posting the below (Time spent about 10-15 to type up below) I see the OP post was from 05-05-2009....

WD drives used to be packaged with cloning software. Check the WD website for downloadable version.

Seagate also offers "downloadable" cloning software (A OEM copy of Arconis True Image) If you have a old Seagate, Or Maxtor drive plug it in and it will run.

Both should be free, if not try EASEUS Disk Copy http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

You mention (2) drives, are you talking about partitions?
(Most apps should be able to clone a partition as well so below still applies in principle.)

If it is two separate drives, use the WD/Segate/whatever software to clone the current OS install located on your storage drive to the new drive.

At the end of the cloning process there will be a message that says to remove the old drive. (It's been a while but I think you can ignore this as long as you have the "new" drive that you just cloned listed in the bios as being the 1st bootable device, if it's a IDE drive for sure have it as MASTER

Alternatively you could after the cloning process completes on the drive you want to remove the OS on to use a partitioning program to deselect (remove) /edit that drive so it isn't "bootable.
(Some systems get confused with (2) bootable drives.)


At end of this as a example without knowing the size of your DATA drive.

C:\\250gb (new drive) would have OS, and storage files from old drive.
D:\\200 gb(DATA , aka Storage drive) would have OS and storage files on it.

At that point you would manually delete any storage files on C:\\250, and delete unneeded OS files off of D:200 leaving you with OS files on C:, Data files on D.


Alternate to above is to pull the 200gb OS/Storage drive, install Win7 to new drive, then re-install storage drive and delete the OS files off Data (storage) drive.


.
Edited by WeAreNotAlone - 12/2/09 at 9:35pm

i was researching this topic and came across this thread. I think there is an easier way simply by using the Windows 7 system backup utility. See this link here:

http://searchdatabackup.techtarget.c...371497,00.html

Its seems that all you need to do is select the "create system image option", target it to some external drive. Then using the utility create a rescue disc (DVD). you can then boot from this DVD and restore the entire system drive image to a new HDD.

I'd be curious to know if anyone has tried this technique. It sure seems less work than having to deal with Acronis or Ghost which both seem to be having lots of problems right now on W7.

Just done it! Works a treat (Well done microsoft).

It's really easy to move a windows 7 install from your old hard drive to your new one.

All you need is a hard drive big enough to carry the image. It can be internal or external.

Goto Control Panel > Backup and Restore > Create a system image.

Also create a System Repair disc (although i am sure that your original boot DVD will work).

If you have more than 2 internal hard drives one thing to check when you restore your drive is in the advanced options because you have to unselect the drives you DON'T want to apply the saved image too... Bit wierd but thats the only thing to check.

For those moving to a larger hard disk it will create an identically sized partition but once you boot into your new installation you can easy have the Disk management "extend" the drive space. (REALLY IMPRESSED MS!)

All you have to do is open Windows Explorer > Right click on 'Computer' > Manage > Disk Management > Right click on the partition that holds the OS > select EXPAND... > then select next. INSTANTLY makes the space ready.

I tried doing it with GHOST 15 and I failed to get it working. IMHO Ghost 15 not for the home user.