Cloning hard drive

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SteveM
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Cloning hard drive

Post by SteveM »

I have a desktop dell with windows 7. Hard drive running out of room, so I picked up a 2TB drive.

I want to make the new drive the primary drive, so I need (I think) to clone the current C: drive.

When I do a google search on the topic, all I seem to get is guys saying "download this software".

First of all, I can't tell if the software is spyware, second, shouldn't there be something in Windows to do this?

They don't ship computers with the operating system CD's anymore, so I can't use those to build it.

Steve
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Harold_V
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by Harold_V »

Have you explored AOMEI Backupper? I'm not sure it could be used for your needs, but I expect it could be. I use it to backup my entire hard drive, including the operating system.

Note that I am a computer moron, so it may not work as I think. It is for that reason I suggested that you explore the idea.

It was a free download. http://www.aomeitech.com/

Harold
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steamin10
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by steamin10 »

This blurb of a topic is of great interest to me, as my sytem is run out beig XP pro, now unsupported and an increasing target for malware and all that negative crap from third world countries.

I have several machines that are good bases for networking a set of computers into a newer based operating system. However, I am told that the way computers are built is changing and going to non- disc drive storage .

Yes, I am pretty much a complete computer moron. But I am trying to use what I have to keep costs in line, ( read as affordable with sparse money.)
Rose picked up a notebook, (laptop?) for $200 for use in the rescue on the road, as it has wi-fi and abilities far beyond mortal men. It was a Pawn unit, and only 4 months old.

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woodguy
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by woodguy »

I had a number of requests from friends to replace their slow laptop drives with SSDs and the problem there is, of course, the same as yours.

I used to use Acronis TrueImage for this purpose but have switched to a free product by Macrium called reflect.

You can get it here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

No affiliation etc etc.....Just a user
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SteveHGraham
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by SteveHGraham »

I bought two SSD drives, and they cloned without issue. You really want this kind of drive if you can afford it. You will be amazed to learn how much of your computer's time was wasted by the conventional hard drive.
Every hard-fried egg began life sunny-side up.
Russ Hanscom
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by Russ Hanscom »

It has been a few years, and things have probably changed, but when I wanted to upgrade a hard drive, I plugged in a second unit to the master cable next to the original one, there were several connectors, and copied everything to the second drive, then I switched the new drive to the connector for the original one; apparently the drive in the first connector is recognized as the main drive, and that was all it took. This was in a tower case type unit.
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by SteveM »

I don't think that a copy of the drive will work, as I believe that there are one or more hidden recovery partitions.

I'm trying to do this without downloading software, as I have no way to verify that the software itself isn't a virus, trojan horse, malware, ransomware, or the Russians trying to hack me because they think I'm the DNC.

Steve
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by SteveHGraham »

You'll be fine as long as you don't go after Bernie Sanders.
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ctwo
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by ctwo »

When I upgraded to Win10, I bought a new HDD first and used CloneZilla to clone my existing Win7 partitions. There are two partitions for Win7, 8, 10. The second is a small "reserved" partition. I have been running my cloned drive now with Win10.

CloneZilla is usually downloaded as an iso file, an image file to be burned to disc. The disc is bootable and the selections are fairly easy to follow. The new drive should be set up with the needed partitions before booting CloneZilla. The partitions need to be the same size as the source drive if cloning as there are some other options.

Microsoft does not give you tools to do this.

http://clonezilla.org/
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BadDog
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by BadDog »

Just a small comment trying to avoid going into too many details.

First off, many new retail box drives come with cloning software.

Second, other than sheer bulk storage, I would never consider buying an old school HD. I use SSDs exclusively for OS/boot drives, and just installed one in my friend's laptop. It had a good bit of RAM and a decent processor but was still PAINFULLY slow running W7. I put in an SSD and a new OS install and it's now amazingly fast, absolutely blew his mind. I put one in my laptop years ago when I was contemplating buying a new one for work, but with the SSD I'm still content using it now years later, and I cannot stand a slow computer.

I personally would never use a cloned drive. It may not be a good idea if you are a died in the wool ludite (not intended as derogatory), but it's always best to start clean. I discovered years ago that simply installing the OS again every year or two made the otherwise identical system speed up quite noticeably. Before that I tried all sorts of this and that to defragment the registry and many other things, but it's just far easier and far more beneficial to just start clean, particularly if you have installed and updated/uninstalled a bunch of stuff over time. It's just too easy to start over to fool with it much. And if I don't have everything backed up (which I usually do), I just stick the old drive in a second slot or external to copy what I need off it.

I manage my wife's and my machines as well a (very) few friends in this way, and my son manages his and a few friends with the same basic approach, and my daughter her own as well. We've never had a significant problem, but of course I'm not the one that will be having to sort yours if you do have problems. But the best things is, even if you do have problems you can't resolve, you still have the original unmolested drive to clone as a last resort. Good luck whatever your decision...
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ctwo
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by ctwo »

Russ, he does not have an OS disc to install from. And there is nothing inherently wrong with a cloned drive, but of course if you clone a garbage corrupt system the clone will be just the same. I use cloned images from a fresh clean install because it's a lot faster to write the data than to go through the installation, and I usually update the OS before cloning so I do not have to go through all the painful updates again.

Steve, now I realize you may have a 3rd partition to clone - the recovery partition that has your OS utilities and factory image. If I were you, I would just install the new drive as a second drive and leave the primary as-is. I usually set up my machines with a very fast primary and then a very large secondary. The secondary get the first 300 GB partitioned for a scratch drive. The first 300 GB of a 2 TB disc drive has a fairly fast data transfer rate since the data is on the outside of the platter, which will have a higher linear velocity, and thus faster relative data rate.
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BadDog
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Re: Cloning hard drive

Post by BadDog »

I use that technique with VMs all the time. Either fully cloned and stored (on a 3TB rotary drive) or setting snapshot for later reversion, just not with a primary OS. So I agree that as long as you have a "fresh" image, nothing wrong with a clone. The problem with clones is that most don't start with a fresh image.

I also didn't notice he didn't have the original installation option. That clearly changes things.

For hardware installs I usually use (as hardware supports) USB 3.0 flash drives installing onto SATA 6.0 SSDs, and ISO from SSD for VM installs (that aren't pre-canned), so installs go pretty fast. The only thing that takes time is Windows sorting out all the hardware drivers.
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