Here's how we transfer or clone Windows from one hard disk to another. This process should work for transferring any NTFS based filesystem, bootable or not.

Preparation

The following equipment and tools are necessary to perform this task.

Prepare the Windows System

Not much here, make sure the machine is stable and does have any updates pending. Run a Windows disk check (chkdsk /f) and reboot the system twice. When the boot process is verified clean reboot and start up from the SystemRescueCd.

Backup the Partition Information

Using sfdisk we can dump to a reasonable format that we can feed back to sfdisk when restoring. 

# sfdisk -d /dev/sda > /mnt/storage/sda.ptab

Backup the BootSector/MBR

Some guides show only taking the first 512 bytes (MBR), others show the first 63 blocks (MBR + Bootloader). 

# dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/storage/sda.mbr bs=512 count=1
# dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/storage/sda.vbr bs=512 count=63

Create FileSystem Copy

SystemRescueCd should boot directly to a shell, we will dump the file system and power off.

There are many ways to store the file system image, not covered here. The ntfsclone tool does not care. We have sucessfully created images on external USB drives (ext3), over Samba shares (to NTFS & Samba 3), GlusterFS (reiser,ext4) and others. Just ensure capacity is available and the FS supports large files.

In the example the Windows system is installed to /dev/sda1. The image storage location is mounted, through whatever means necessary, at /mnt/storage. Adjust parameters as necessary for the environment.

Examine the disk before starting, take note of the Space in use value. The image created by ntfsclone will be slightly larger ( ~2%). 

# ntfsresize --info /dev/sda1
ntfsresize v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)
Device name        : /dev/sda1
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size       : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 25802666496 bytes (25803 MB)
Current device size: 25802671104 bytes (25803 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use       : 10949 MB (42.4%)
Collecting resizing constraints ...
You might resize at 10948591616 bytes or 10949 MB (freeing 14854 MB).
Please make a test run using both the -n and -s options before real resizing!

If ntfsresize complains follow it's request to run chkdsk /f and try again. The clone should only be created from a dirty file system in emergencies. 

# ntfsclone --save-image --output /mnt/storage/windows.ntfsclone /dev/sda1
ntfsclone v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size       : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 25802666496 bytes (25803 MB)
Current device size: 25802671104 bytes (25803 MB)
Scanning volume ...
100.00 percent completed
Accounting clusters ...
Space in use       : 10949 MB (42.4)
Saving NTFS to image ...
100.00 percent completed

If the disk is in really bad shape the following incantations may help: 

ntfsclone --save-image --rescue --output /mnt/storage/windows.ntfsclone /dev/sda1
ntfsclone --save-image --ignore-fs-check --rescue --output /mnt/storage/windows.ntfsclone /dev/sda1
ntfsclone --save-image --force --ignore-fs-check --rescue --output \
  /mnt/storage/windows.ntfsclone /dev/sda1

After creating the clone, poweroff the system and replace the current HDD with the new disk.

Restoring Windows Image

Use cfdisk to partition, use ntfsclone to restore the image, then ntfsresize to resize to larger volume.

Many tools can partition, such as fdisk or cfdisk or which ever. Using any of these tools create a partition on the new disk similar to the original disk. In this example the original disk was replaced with one twice the size.

Cfdisk was used to create a partition (/dev/sda1) that was 50GiB in size and then the type was set to 0x07 (NTFS) and flagged as bootable. Do not format the partition with a file-system, leave it empty. 

# ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/sda1 /mnt/storage/windows.ntfsclone
ntfsclone v2.0.0 (libntfs 10:0:0)
Ntfsclone image version: 10.0
Cluster size           : 4096 bytes
Image volume size      : 25802666496 bytes (25803 MB)
Image device size      : 25802671104 bytes (25803 MB)
Space in use           : 10949 MB (42.4%)
Offset to image data   : 56 (0x38) bytes
Restoring NTFS from image ...
100.00 percent completed

Now reboot the system, Windows will run a file-system check and all should be well. It may be a good idea to start in Safe Mode (press F8 during startup)

We have successfully use this process to archive an 80GiB /dev/sda2 Windows (/dev/sda1 was recovery partition from Dell) to /dev/sda1 on a new disk (120GiB).

Moving NTFS volumes around is a dangerous game, care should be taken. Ensure backups are available, cross fingers, etc.

ntfsclone direct disk to disk

It's also possible, and very useful, to directly clone one disk to another, i.e. replacing a failing disk. It an ideal world this new disk would be identical, to minimize the possibility of Windows having a fit. But even if not identical, we can make it happen.

Clone Identical Disks

In this example /dev/sdb is the old disk, /dev/sda is the new one, I've booted from a CD. We create the target partition, run clone|clone

If they disk are identical then manually create a similar partition table and just use dd 

sfdisk -d /dev/sdb | sfdisk --force /dev/sda
sfdisk --re-read /dev/sda
dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/sda1

Clone to Smaller Disk

If not identical then ntfsclone comes in, this allows us to copy differently sized NTFS partitions. Here, /dev/sdb3 is the source partition (160G) from our old dual-boot disk and /dev/sda3 is the smaller sized target (128G). First, shrink the old NTFS to less than the limit, clone, then resize new NTFS to fill the partition. 

ntfsresize --size 120G /dev/sdb3
ntfsclone \
    --force \
    --overwrite /dev/sda3 \
    /dev/sdb3
# Boot the Window Here and chkdsk
ntfsresize --size MAX /dev/sda3

Note that it's not wise to try to move the partitions around on Windows. That is, don't clone from /dev/sdb3 to /dev/sda2 or other such, Windows is very sensitive to those changes and will likely blue-screen on you. It's a STOP 0x0000007B, inaccessible boot device.

See Also