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Cloning a Hard Drive

Snowdog

By Snowdog,
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Snowdog

Snowdog

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My C drive in my desktop has been making some funny noises and after doing a bit of research, it seems the bearings are the culprit. I found a wav file of bearings going bad on a HD and that is the same noise my makes from time to time.

 

So, I'm guessing I need to replace this one before it completely dies. But I've never done this before.

 

From what I've read, the best option is to clone your old drive onto your new one before it goes. That way you don't have to reinstall the OS and all of programs and data.

 

I've found some freeware that will clone your drive, but I've never gone through the actual steps and am somewhat reluctant to tackle this and lose all my stuff through a stupid mistake I might make.

 

If anybody can give me some advice on the best way to tackle this, I sure would appreciate it.

 

trink39.gif

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WCFIELDS

WCFIELDS

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not sure about freeware, but Norton Ghost works well.......it creates an exact image of your drive.......then you restore that image to your new drive.
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Some Half-Forgotten Stranger

Some Half-Forgotten Stranger

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QUOTE (WCFIELDS @ May 2 2010, 05:22 PM)
not sure about freeware, but Norton Ghost works well.......it creates an exact image of your drive.......then you restore that image to your new drive.

Wish I'd known about Norton Ghost a few months ago...I had a hard drive start to fail and managed to get about 99% of the hard drive transered but the 1% contained something I really needed which is gone.

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Snowdog

Snowdog

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QUOTE (SiriusRushFan @ May 10 2010, 12:56 AM)
I used Acronis True Image when I got my new SSD to transfer my stuff over from my old HDD.

I found a free program called Macrium Reflect that was recommended in some online pc tech sites.

 

I have 2 500 GB hard drives in my machine and the 2nd one only contains the original factory configuration (which is Vista, I've upgraded to 7).

 

So, I used Reflect to do a complete copy of the primary drive onto my secondary.

 

One thing that has me confused though, the "mirror image" is 80 GB smaller than my primary. I've used 300 GB on my primary drive and the mirror image is only 220 GB in size. So I'm wondering whats the deal with that?

 

Is the mirror image that was created a bootable drive? Does it contain my OS?

 

Any help is appreciated.

Edited by Snowdog
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SiriusRushFan

SiriusRushFan

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QUOTE (Snowdog @ May 10 2010, 04:40 PM)
QUOTE (SiriusRushFan @ May 10 2010, 12:56 AM)
I used Acronis True Image when I got my new SSD to transfer my stuff over from my old HDD.

I found a free program called Macrium Reflect that was recommended in some online pc tech sites.

 

I have 2 500 GB hard drives in my machine and the 2nd one only contains the original factory configuration (which is Vista, I've upgraded to 7).

 

So, I used Reflect to do a complete copy of the primary drive onto my secondary.

 

One thing that has me confused though, the "mirror image" is 80 GB smaller than my primary. I've used 300 GB on my primary drive and the mirror image is only 220 GB in size. So I'm wondering whats the deal with that?

 

Is the mirror image that was created a bootable drive? Does it contain my OS?

 

Any help is appreciated.

Not sure what's going on there but don't delete your old HD until you have tried booting up the new one first! lol ph34r.gif

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NewWorldMan1971

NewWorldMan1971

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Looks like the folks here have made some good suggestions with the drive imaging. A good option for prolonging the life of your current troubled HDD is to use a product called "SpinRite."

 

(http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm)

 

I'm a DBA now, but in my earlier days as a network administrator, I've used this a few times and it has literally SAVED us some serious downtime for users' PCs when their HDDs were failing, or had already failed. I even used it once for a server drive, on the rare occasion where 2 drives fail in a RAID5 configuration and we managed to get it back enough to do a full backup.

 

Just throwing in my 2 cents. Good luck.

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thebigguyconnor

thebigguyconnor

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QUOTE (Snowdog @ May 10 2010, 04:40 PM)
QUOTE (SiriusRushFan @ May 10 2010, 12:56 AM)
I used Acronis True Image when I got my new SSD to transfer my stuff over from my old HDD.

I found a free program called Macrium Reflect that was recommended in some online pc tech sites.

 

I have 2 500 GB hard drives in my machine and the 2nd one only contains the original factory configuration (which is Vista, I've upgraded to 7).

 

So, I used Reflect to do a complete copy of the primary drive onto my secondary.

 

One thing that has me confused though, the "mirror image" is 80 GB smaller than my primary. I've used 300 GB on my primary drive and the mirror image is only 220 GB in size. So I'm wondering whats the deal with that?

 

Is the mirror image that was created a bootable drive? Does it contain my OS?

 

Any help is appreciated.

Macrium Reflect is a great program - I use it too, to back up my PCs.

 

The Image of your Primary drive that Reflect created includes EVERYTHING that was on that drive, INCLUDING your OS. If you wanted, you could put the image onto a hard drive and boot up to your computer just exactly the same as the day you imaged it.

 

Reflect compresses the image, so the reason the image is smaller than your hard drive is because the image is compressed.

 

You can explore Reflect image files using the software (inside of the software select an image to explore and it will mount it as if it were a hard drive).

Edited by thebigguyconnor
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snowdogged

snowdogged

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One thing you should consider is how well is your OS running. If you have no issues with it then cloning is a good way to go, but if you do have issues with it then you would probably be better off just backing up all your data and installing a clean OS.
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thebigguyconnor

thebigguyconnor

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QUOTE (snowdogged @ Oct 30 2010, 08:19 AM)
One thing you should consider is how well is your OS running. If you have no issues with it then cloning is a good way to go, but if you do have issues with it then you would probably be better off just backing up all your data and installing a clean OS.

the only issue with just doing your data is you might forget something in some obscure folder. I find making a clone image is the safest way.

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