Drive Cloning -- One Partition To Another

[kbronski]

So, in my disk management I have a few partitions. I have, in order from left to right, a Windows 7 partition, a shared data partition, and a Windows 8 partition. Well, the shared data partition is only 110GB, and it's almost full. That said, the Windows 8 partition was 380GB. So, I shrank the Windows 8 partition to 280GB, thus allowing 100GB unallocated. I made a new partition there too, and I want to clone the Windows 8 partition to the new one, (kind of a roundabout way of moving my OS to a new partition, so I can add more space to my shared data partition). Is this necessarily a good idea? Can I actually do it?

Do I just copy all the files over, or do I legitimately clone it?



HERE IS A VISUAL


BEFORE
||SYSTEM RESERVED||WINDOWS 7||SHARED DATA||WINDOWS 8||

NOW
||SYSTEM RESERVED||WINDOWS 7||SHARED DATA||WINDOWS 8||BLANK PARTITION||


WHAT I WANT TO DO
||SYSTEM RESERVED||WINDOWS 7||SHARED DATA||BLANK PARTITION||WINDOWS 8||

 

[GMan]

I wouldn't use anything else other than Acronis to alter partitions. Others may be alright, some others definitely not alright, but Acronis is tested and known well.

I would use Clonezilla to clone to the new partition. I'd also make sure the new partition is a Primary one.

You can use EasyBCD to add the new entry for the "new" operating system.

 

[Calico]

You should be able to achieve what you need but you need to be careful. The boot manager stores information on how to boot windows based on partition. If the partition that stores the Windows files changes and the boot manager remains unchanged, you won't be able to start Windows. However, as you want to effectively keep the overall partition structure the same - after merging the unallocated space with your shared data partition - you should be ok.

If it were me, I'd use one of the free partition managers to manage the change. There are quite a few of these applications available, here's a couple:

Easus Partition Manager
Partition Wizard

 

[kbronski]

Well, I sadly announce the project took a rather harsh nosedive. When I formally made the new partition, it changed ALL of my partitions to simple volumes and I thus lost the ability to boot from the Windows 8 partition. This was before I read the replies to this topic, of course, and as such, I freaked out and deleted both the new partition and the Windows 8 partition.

The good news is that I've successfully added a TON of storage space to my data partition. The downside is that all of my partitions are still showing as simple volumes and I'm not sure how to fix it.

I may end up just properly backing everything up and then completely reformatting my hard drive. It could use a few thorough wipes anyway.


That said, I have a 500GB portable HDD that's fully partitionable. In fact, I have a free 80GB free partition on it right now, I think, and my C drive (the one with my OS and programs) is only showing 72.9GB used.

Would it be possible just to clone my C drive over to my portable HDD, and then clone it back later using a third-party computer?
I have a SATA-to-USB adapter, so I could pull my internal HDD and hook it up to someone else's computer to successfully clone it all back.

This is what I'm thinking:
Step 1
||MY LAPTOP||--->||PORTABLE HDD||

Step 2
||INTERNAL HDD||<---||(third party laptop for data transfer)||<---||PORTABLE HDD||


I'd just wipe my internal HDD and reformat the whole thing (no partitions). That way I'd be sure to have it show up as the C drive (and thus bootable). From there, I could add my shared data partition, and Windows 8 Parition, and just install 8 on that partition (so it would show up as E drive in boot manager again; no problems, right?)

Is this logical and doable, or am I blowing smoke?

 

[GMan]

Sorry to hear about it...

It seems that your disk is dynamic when all you really need is basic.

Informative link: Basic and Dynamic Disks

 

[Calico]

It's quite possible to convert a Dynamic disk back to a Basic disk non-destructively. Take a look at:

TestDisk - non-destructively converting dynamic disks to basic disks
Convert dynamic disk to basic disk with dynamic disk manager.

However, depending on the amount of data you have, you may be better starting from scratch.

 

[8lover]

here goes the related tutorial:
Partition Assistant Helps You Copy Partition to New Hard Drive without Data Loss
it makes clone partition simple!