This is kind of a follow up to "Installing cloned image to SSD" post of mine earlier. I would like to remove the "System Reserved" partition from my current SSD before I clone it to the new SSD. I have read that removing it will prevent booting from the drive and the MBR will have to be repaired. I opened up "Disk Manager" in Windows 7 and it showed "System, Active, Primary Partition" to be on "System Reserved", and "Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition" to be on the main partition. My questions are: Can I just shrink the "System Reserved" partition using the disk manager? If I do, will the system boot without repair since the "Boot" is on the primary partition or, can I use BCD to repair the MBR after shrinking the reserved. Or, do I have to use the Windows "Startup Repair" utility from the Windows disk? jetjock
im sure you can use EasyBCD to detect and write a new mbr, but from what i gather from a quick google is that the 100mb partition is used for tools and other things to boot windows 7, im guessing if windows 7 fails to boot it loads the rollback tools from that partition. its only 100mb though... then again i havent read your other post so i dont know your circumstances for wanting to remove the partition
u can remove.. first copy the boot folder and bootmgr to the main partition.. now run the repair boot from 7 dvd.
Many thanks for the reply. Situation has changed considerably since my post. Long story shortened: new SSD was not compatible with my computer (worked fine on wife's!) but in trying to trouble shoot it, my main SSD got hammered somehow. I've restored the drive from an Acronis backup (System Reserved and all) but when I try to boot to it I'm asked to repair boot from Win 7 DVD. My question: if I repair the boot and it either works or it doesn't, will I still be able to switch back to the drive that I'm on now, that also has Win 7 but no System reserved partition, and boot to it? I'm really afraid to repair the boot on my SSD for fear of loosing my ability to boot to this drive, as it's all I have left that's working! jetjock