Windows 10: Can I separate and move the boot partition from an old HDD to a smaller HDD or SSD?

I have a 3TB HDD that I have been using for many years, and it is starting to slow down. is there any way I can move my boot data onto a smaller HDD or SSD and keep my current HDD as a storage drive? all the guides online are talking about moving from one drive to another of the same size or larger, but I don't want to have to buy another 3TB drive and move all my data over if I can use a smaller drive and just move the OS.

:)

 

Switching Windows Boot Manager from HDD to SSD

(1) It is the EFI partition that holds the boot files including the BCD (Boot Configuration Data). The BCD tells the boot process which Windows partition to boot to. It looks like you set the BIOS correctly to boot using EFI (& its BCD) that is on the SSD. However, that is a clone of EFI on the HDD -- which loads the Windows partition that is on the HDD. You need to alter the SSD's BCD to boot to the Windows partition that is on the SSD. Let's see your BCD...

(a) Type CMD into Search, & click Run as Administrator.

(b) Enter the following commands...

BCDEdit /Enum All <<<Show the BCD

DiskPart <<<Enter DiskPart

List Vol <<<List the Volumes

Select Disk 0 <<<Focus on the HDD

List Part <<<List its partitions

Select Disk 1 <<<Focus on the SSD

List Part <<<List its partitions

Exit <<<Exit DiskPart

Use Ctrl-A & Ctrl-C to copy, then post it to us. We can adjust it manually.

(2) It might be as Paloma suggests, that disconnecting the HDD will cause the BCD (on the SSD) to self-adjust. Windows might do an automatic Startup Repair. But I hope it also gets the Recovery partition right.

(3) I guess you want that D: partition. So, after all is well with the SSD, you may plug the HDD back in. But it will be best to delete its EFI, Windows & Recovery partitions. Just keep D:.

 

Windows will not boot from SSD after reformatting old HDD

hi Greg,

Thanks once again for your help!

so for some reason, my PC would not boot from my RAID if it was setup as RAID 5, I configured it with RAID 10 and I was able to install Windows on the RAID (SSD unplugged). I will move back to RAID 5 once I am able to boot from my SSD.

I installed Win10 on my RAID with SSD unplugged

Plugged SSD back in, booted from my HDD RAID and shrunk the SSD partition via Disk Manager.

Unplugged the HDDs and installed Win10 on the SSD unallocated space.

Dual boot now shows 3 boot options but I'm not sure why as I only have 2 partitions on the SSD and the HDDs are still unplugged. Windows Media is not able to repair the other 2 Windows boot options.

I cannot find \windows\System32\Logfile\Srt\SrtTrail.txt under any of the drives (C, D, E and X)

And booting from the other 2 gives the same error as before but with different error code:

The application or operating system couldn't be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.

File: \\Windows\System32\winload.exe

Error code: 0xc0000000e

Now I need to somehow repair the boot environment on my old SSD partition. Would you have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Felipe.

 

Changing boot hdd

I downloaded PartitionMagic8.0, but the partition i want to make is not bootable.
So the system boots from the old, loud hdd, and when i unplug the old, it doesnt boot.
Any advice or suggestions how to change boot hdd without reinstalling Winxp?