Move Oem Win 8.1 To A Different Hard Drive In The Same Tower

Detailed specs of my pc are at the bottom of the post.
There is also a link to the url where my PC's specs were published

My computer
2 separate hard disc drives installed in the tower

A 2TB Toshiba, factory installed
A 250GB Seagate from an old pc​

OEM Windows 8.1

I also have my own retail installation discs for XP and the Win 7 upgrade


What I want to do, step by step.

Can this be done?

Part 1

Clone the OEM 8.1
Copy it to the Seagate hdd
Take the free upgrade to Win 10
Clone Win 10
Copy the Win 10 clone to the Seagate hdd.
Remove old Seagate with Win 8 and 10 safely jailed away
Hide it somewhere.
If I should ever happen to need Win 8 or 10, I can let one out of jail if I need to.​

Part 2

Wipe the Toshiba drive (I've wiped drives before)
Install a fresh copy of XP and the Win 7 upgrade (I've also done this before)

Live happily ever after. ​

Thank you!

My PC
http://speccy.piriform.com/results/DzNdeOxnFQGxKvyWQUy7ORg
Operating System
Windows 8.1 64-bit


Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. M51AD

BIOS
Brand American Megatrends Inc.
Version 0507
Date 4/2/2014​

 

There are a couple of issues that may prevent what you want to do from being successful — the way the two disks are initialized — the 2TB Toshiba will be initialized GPT and the old 250GB Seagate is more than likely initialized MBR.

If you did re-initialize the Seagate to GPT, and did a disk clone, you still couldn't install XP afterward on the Toshiba because XP doesn't support GPT. Windows 7 64-bit and later (64-bit) do.

 

You would not be able to keep both 8.1 and 10. One month after upgrading your 8.1 licence is cancelled.

 

Not necessarily so. MBR can support up to 2TB

 

More questions.
I researched the MBR v GPT thing.

If I re-initialize the Toshiba to MBR, will there be complications with the UEFI/BIOS?

Are Win 8.1 and 10 backward compatible? (Will they work on an MBR initialized HDD?)

Will re-initializing the Toshiba to MBR affect performance of the HDD? Transfer mode, speed?

 

If you are OK with losing ALL data through re-initialising, and having to set Windows and everything else up again from scratch, then you will not see any difference in performance between MBR and GPT. Your UEFI/BIOS does not care what format you use, it just looks for the active disk/partition and passes control to its boot sector.

Are you quite sure you want to go through all of this for zero gain?

 

Yes I'm willing to do it.

As long as I have either 8 or qr 10 cloned and the same size drive to restore it on, it's worth it to me. I really miss my Win 7. I just prefer it over 8 and 10.

As I understand it, I can't migrate them to a smaller hard drive. I'm trying to figure out if I can use an image disc to to restore Win 8/10 to a wiped drive of the same size.....or back onto the Toshiba.
If I can, then I'll feel comfortable wiping the Toshiba completely and re-initializing it. I haven't found a definitive answer yet searching the net. I am however, learning a lot more than I knew before embarking on this journey! That's not such bad thing though
If I can, then I'll feel comfortable wiping the Toshiba completely and re-initializing it.

My biggest concern here is having the ability to put Win 8 or 10 back onto the Toshiba HDD if I need to do it at some time in the future.
If I can't figure out a way around this, I'll have to either buy a another better hard drive or keep using the Seagate for Win 7.

Believe it or not, this kind of thing is actually fun for me!

Thank you!

 

??. I mentioned nothing about mbr disk capacities, just the fact that the older drive is more than likely initialized mbr and the Toshiba (being factory installed) is initialized gpt.

I'm running my disks as mbr but am using legacy boot so I can boot to floppy or usb. I can't do that from UEFI boot, there's no boot priority option for it.

 

Just took a look around at New Egg.
I doesn't cost much to
1) Buy a new hard drive equal to or better than the Toshiba I have now
2) buy an upgrade

 

Good for you! You should be fine then. It's going to present you with quite a few problems and you may not succeed first time. The best advice I can offer is to image (not clone) your Toshiba as it is now so you will have the means to start over in the event you go wrong or hit a brick wall. You will need a spare drive with at least 20% larger free space than the sum of the used space in all partitions. That will be a lot less than 2TB and you can use a program like Macrium Reflect to create the image and the boot disk it will need later, when restoring. It would be very risky to go ahead without that first step.

 

Got that!

Just what I've been looking for.....verification that it CAN be done this way!

 

I'm not saying that, just making sure you can go back and start again if you hit problems. I certainly can't see atm how you are going to get XP as well as 7 because of the MBR/GPT situation.

 

Sorry mdonah - just not sure when the OEMs moved to GPT. I bought a new system (custom build) just two years ago and that is MBR.

 

I meant that I can go back to Win 8 on the re-initialized drive with image disks rather that cloning.

A working PC with 8.1 or 10 is better than a PC with no operating system.
I just want to be safe rather than sorry.

Also, I've found successful instances of people re-initializing the hard drive to MBR in order to install XP.

This sounds like a lot of work! I think I'll have to wait til the weekend to do the real work.

In the meantime, I'm going to restore this PC to manufacturers settings, upgrade to 10 (I think) and then create image discs with that software you mentioned.

Thank you, thank you, thank you SO MUCH! *Doin' the happy dance*