Cloning HDD's with System Partition

[Nico]

A few months ago I started to have issues with several applications, most of them games. They could randomly slow down and freeze, both at starting and closing them. I've made a DxDiag and sent it so someone I trust, and they told me my HDD is about to die. I already bought a replacement, but instead of having to install everything again from zero I want to clone the fading drive into the new, fresh one.

 

This drive I'm about to replace is three years old, it has been used almost daily during that period and it was at one point the sole disk in my PC. About a year after I built this PC I got a SSD, and then moved the OS (W7) into that drive, which improved the overall performance. However, right now while using AOMEI Partition Assistant I noticed that my HDD, which as I said contained the OS formerly, now contains the 100MB system partition that is needed to boot up the OS. I've been told that is not necessary to clone that partition, but that contradicts everything I've read about it. Is this normal? Shouldn't the system partition share the same drive as the OS? And most importantly, should I clone it along with the rest of my drive? I need some clarification.

 

EDIT - I already went ahead and cloned the disk with the partition included, and everything works wonders now. I've checked some of the games that used to freeze, and they don't do it anymore. Seems solved to me.

[sivispacem]

If your boot partition is on the old drive, you'll need that in order for the OS to boot, even if the OS itself is installed elsewhere. You can try cloning it, but in the long run the best thing to do would be to reinstall the OS as splitting boot and OS between two drives will worsen performance and can cause all sorts of other oddities.