Want to clone hard drive

swanseamale47

swanseamale47

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wayne clarke
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Ok I have a new drive installed and have more or less got it where I want it (few things to go) then I want to clone it over to another drive, an exact copy. The idea being is to have a swop over if the drive gets corrupted or virused (is that a word?)
What is the easiest software to use to do it, something I don't need Steven Hawkins to figure out.
I'm assuming I put the second (reciever) drive in as a slave?
Thanks Wayne
 
try SyncToy a free download from Microsoft.
 
I use drive snapshot.... Rescued me on 2 occasions.
 
windows 7 has a backup manager in the control panel, you can tell it to take a drive image, no 3rd party software needed. i think windows vista has it as well.
 
If you have Win7 I'd agree with the above. If not, take a look at DriveImageXML - it's probably one of the easier ones for the non techy.
 
Wayne

Be aware that not everything will work as expected even if you clone a drive.

We recently went through a big update cloning the laptops and rack computers that we use when onsite to new SSD drives.

Generally, all went well. However, Photoshop wouldn't run.

I believe that Adobe gives you two installs for each of it's products. If you try a third, or clone a disk then you need to 'unlicense' a copy back to Adobe, then clone, then relicense on the new disk.

J
 
GoNz0 said:
windows 7 has a backup manager in the control panel, you can tell it to take a drive image, no 3rd party software needed. i think windows vista has it as well.
Click to expand...

Some of the higher end vista versions do but home premium and below iirc only have data file backup.
 
Jerm said:
Generally, all went well. However, Photoshop wouldn't run.
Click to expand...
Then you aren't cloning the drive ;) A clone is just that, bit for bit copy of the data on the drive. It should be indistinguishable from the original.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Sorry I should have explained it better. Yes os as well. I want a total copy of my C drive (the os drive) with all the installed programs.
Wayne
Click to expand...

you wont be able to do that with something like sync toy then..

youll need something like symantec ghost which will cost you but there are other free apps available.

and to pre-empt those suggesting RAID1 mirroring, that wont protect you against corruption.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Sorry I should have explained it better. Yes os as well. I want a total copy of my C drive (the os drive) with all the installed programs.
Wayne
Click to expand...
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Does what it says on the tin. No more, no less. All the other drive ghosting systems introduce loads of guff that doesn't help you see what you are doing.
 
If you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive in your computer, or even as an external, you can use:

Seagate Discwizard

When you install this you get the option to create a boot CD which will allow you to clone your drive. If you don't have a Seagate or Maxtor in your computer you will get a warning when booting from CD, but you get around that by pressing <ALT> T O.

However, I don't know if it will actually allow you to install Discwizard in the first place if you don't have a Seagate or Maxtor, but it's free so worth a try.

If you have a WD, you can use the WD version:

Acronis True Image WD Edition
 
swanseamale47 said:
Sorry I should have explained it better. Yes os as well. I want a total copy of my C drive (the os drive) with all the installed programs.
Wayne
Click to expand...

I've used Acronis True Image for cloning (not imaging) C drive to an indentical hard drive (i.e. both the same make & capacity). The clone produced is an exact copy of C - including the OS, programmes and all settings.

You don't need to set the clone as slave if it's a SATA drive, just hook it up to a spare connector and run Acronis. (If it isn't a SATA drive then it does have to be set as slave).
 
Ok I have Norton Ghost, True Image and Drive Snapshop suggested, never having used any of them before which is lightly to be easiest to copy the drive over (different make hard drives) not sata but IDE.
Preferably one thats sort of idiot proof ;).
Many thanks for all the helpfull answers everybody.
Thank you. Wayne
 
Norton Ghost isn't the friendliest of software and it's Norton which makes it a hog.
Trueimage was brilliant but the latest software (2010/2011) has the Acronis Forum red hot with complaints about bugs. I'm using 2009 on my two desktops with XP but my laptop with W7 needs a new programme.
I don't know Drive Snapshot ... as a disgruntled Trueimage user I'll check it out myself.
 
NB. Your disks are IDE so you'll need to set the clone as Slave before running the software, then set to Master if you use it as C: drive (after disconnecting the real C: drive).
 
sorry to butt in! what if the hard drive that you cloned dies can you copy the image onto a new hard drive?
 
iclick said:
sorry to butt in! what if the hard drive that you cloned dies can you copy the image onto a new hard drive?
Click to expand...

No - a clone is not an image, it's a direct copy of the original drive (everything is exactly the same including the OS). If you clone drive A to drive B and then B dies, you can't use B but you're still left with A.

If you want to create an image, you'd choose Backup not Clone (in Acronis)
 
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Jumping in here, but to clarify if I can, as I need to do much the same thing - my C drive (ie with my W7 OS plus all my programs) is pretty full, so I want to replace it with a new bigger one without having to re-install.
Is there a totally straight forward way to do it, or would it be best to take it to a computer repair shop ?
I got a bit lost reading the thread - my fault for being old and brain dead !
 
A good imaging programme should allow you to make an image of your drive, fit a new larger drive to your PC and then move the image back to your new drive. I've done it with Trueimage in the past at least 3 times.
 
stevewestern said:
Jumping in here, but to clarify if I can, as I need to do much the same thing - my C drive (ie with my W7 OS plus all my programs) is pretty full, so I want to replace it with a new bigger one without having to re-install.
Is there a totally straight forward way to do it.......
Click to expand...

Yes - make a clone of your existing C drive to a new & bigger drive, it's easy and you can do it in one step. You'll end up with two identical C drives (except the new one will have more Gigabytes).

Is the existing drive SATA or IDE?
 
Ozei said:
Yes - make a clone of your existing C drive to a new & bigger drive, it's easy and you can do it in one step. You'll end up with two identical C drives (except the new one will have more Gigabytes).

Is the existing drive SATA or IDE?
Click to expand...

SATA

..and thanks for the help !
 
Does this new drive need to be empty when I attempt this ?
I already have a 1tb drive that I would put into use, but it would be nice if I didn't have to format it first, or is that just making life hard for myself. I do have a back up on my NAS so its not the end of the world.
 
stevewestern said:
Does this new drive need to be empty when I attempt this ?
I already have a 1tb drive that I would put into use, but it would be nice if I didn't have to format it first, or is that just making life hard for myself. I do have a back up on my NAS so its not the end of the world.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't need to be empty but cloning to it will wipe everything. Personally, I'd reformat anyway.

If you use Acronis/Easeus make sure you select the correct source and destination drives (source is your current C: drive / destination is the 1TB drive you mentioned). Don't get them the wrong way round!!!
 
Ozei said:
....... If you use Acronis/Easeus make sure you select the correct source and destination drives (source is your current C: drive / destination is the 1TB drive you mentioned). Don't get them the wrong way round!!!
Click to expand...

PS. To avoid silly accidents - this is the way I do it.

I've got four hard drives in this machine (C,D,E,F). The clone of C is a fifth drive (let's call it Z).

  • Power down - disconnect D,E,F.
  • Connect Z to one of the (now) spare SATA cables.
  • Power up - launch software.
  • Select C as source.
  • Select Z as destination.
  • Run clone.
  • When finished, power down - disconnect C and Z.
  • Connect Z to C's SATA cable.
  • Power up and check Z is working as the 'new' C.
  • Power down - disconnect Z (and store it somewhere), reconnect C,D,E,F as per orginal setup.

You're now back where you started but you've got an exact copy of C. :)
 
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DriveSnapshot is quick and easy in backup, haven't done a restore ... just have an uneasy feel about it ... anyone used it for any period of time and particularly done a full restore?

Easeus is very like Trueimage but without scheduling for incremental/differential and it's very slow ... backup is still running ... 52% after seems like ages ........ again, anyone done a full restore?
 
gramps said:
DriveSnapshot is quick and easy in backup, haven't done a restore ... just have an uneasy feel about it ... anyone used it for any period of time and particularly done a full restore?
Click to expand...
Yes. It is my main backup solution with differential backups automated on a weekly basis as you can execute it with command line parameters and no gui.

I have used it twice to recover a system disk and both times it worked flawlessly.
 
The other great thing about drive snapshot is it does just that: takes a snapshot of your disk. You can continue working whilst it is backing up as it uses the volume copy service to manage the state of the disks.

My backup strategy is

  • Occasionally: full drive snapshot to backup disk A in machine A
  • Weekly (5am Sunday): differential drive snapshot of main system disks to backup disk A in machine A
  • Every 20 mins during the day (7am to midnight): rsync of main user spaces to backup disk A in machine A
  • Every 15 minutes if they are on: laptops rsync to backup disk A in machine A
  • Nightly: mirror disk A in machine A to disk B in machine B
  • Nightly: mirror music files from disk C in machine A to disk B in machine B

That way, I have at least 2 copies of all my data files to within the last 20 mins plus two copies of each of the system disks that are at most a week old. Also, all my music is shadowed. The only thing I'm not protected for (yet) is losing all disks (across 2 machines) simultaneously....
 
Drive Snapshot has the facility to create a recivery disk, however it insists on an A drive which my laptop doesn't have - is there a work around?
 
You can right click the shortcut in start menu and change A: to be whatever drive you want it to be.

Alternatively,

> cd "c:\Program Files (x86)/Snapshot/" (assuming x64 OS)

then:

> snapshot.exe networkbootdiskette.sna <path of disk>: -G

e.g.,

> snapshot.exe networkbootdiskette.sna f: -G

Alternatively, you can moiunt the boot diskette with:

> snapshot.exe networkbootdiskette.sna f: -V

copy the files off to a separate directory, add any other files you want on the boot disk which would allow you to add in support for other hardware you may have on the PC, and then build a boot image with whatever CD writing package you have (I use starburn which is free, but most CD writing packages have them).
 
Thanks for the replies.
Now the next question, does the dive to be cloned have to be internal or can I use an external housing? External is easier as I have a housing already and it saves poking around inside the pc.
Thanks for all the help everybody.
Wayne
 
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