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I have Western Digital 250GB Blue SSD. I want to transfer my operating systems to it. I have Fedora on one 1TB hard disk and Windows 7 on another one 1TB hard disk. I don't know where the GRUB2 boot files are.

Will locating them, and using dd to clone GRUB2 first, then Windows 7 and Fedora work?

Please help. Thanks

want2code
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2 Answers2

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Moving Windows and Linux installations is too broad a topic to cover in a single answer. In brief, you need to ensure the following after physically moving and resizing the partitions:

  • BIOS boot settings now point to the new drive
  • GRUB2, or whatever boot loader you're using, is installed into the new drive's boot metadata (MBR/PBR/whatever) and can find the new installations
  • Assigned drive letters and mount points stay valid / change them appropriately
    • In Windows, assigned drive letters reside in HKLM\System\MountedDevices. The format of the entries there is undocumented. You can either
      • edit them with some programs that run from a boot CD (I know that Acronis Disk Director can), or
      • delete the entries under the key altogether, then strategically unplug disks and optionally hide partitions so that Windows kernel assigns letters right at boot time (at least, for the system partition - others you can change afterwards)
    • In Linux, mount points are at /etc/fstab except the root FS which is passed to the kernel by the boot loader. Partitions can be identified by either their device name or a filesystem-specific ID or label.
ivan_pozdeev
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Instead of moving everything, it will be better to use the Fedora backup software and make a backup of your OS and than install a new fresh OS on the SSD. With Windows 7, use the "backup and restore menu" in "control panel" and make a copy of the whole "C" drive (tick include a system image of drive C), than restore it to the new install.

Before you erase anything from the drives, first test is everything OK with the SSD.

This tutorial shows how to backup Windows 7: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/1838/using-backup-and-restore-in-windows-7/

Arak Rachael
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