I've read a couple of tutorials found through Google but I wondered if anyone here had first-hand experience of cloning a hard drive.
I've ordered a SSD to replace my SATA C drive and want to clone my existing C drive, it's as simple as that... or is it?
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Yes, use the free version of Macrium Reflect. I did this earlier this week to move on to a larger SSD.
Be sure to clone the whole drive so you get any hidden boot partitions.
Just connect the drive (internally or via a SATA dock), clone the drive and then swap the new drive for the old one. If you intend to re-use the old drive as storage then make sure you leave it out of the machine initially to be sure you are booting off the new drive.
Last edited by Jeremy67; 26th July 2016 at 13:15.
That's one of the tutorials I read. My SSD will be smaller than my existing SATA drive, the current drive is 500GB but I'm only using 130GB so I got a 250GB SSD, will this present any problems?
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Hi Eddie
I have been a Mac user for the last 25 years, and have always used (since its start) Super Duper. This does an exact copy of your HD - bootable etc. It provides a perfect backup and copy and has saved my work a few times. Particularly useful when an operating system upgrade comes around, and you want to save you HD in advance.
If you are a PC user, I believe that Macrium Reflect (http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx) is what my colleagues use, apparently an equivalent to Super Duper. But have never used it myself
BWs
Franco, Sheffield
I did this and it worked fine.Originally Posted by swanbourne
M.
Yes I think I did this first time I cloned as I did go on to a smaller drive. I think Reflect is clever enough to cope.
My Samsung SSD came with a piece of (probably proprietary) software called Drive Magic...
As far as I can remember all I did was install the SSD in a spare slot and it did the rest.
Helpful, I know
I asked the seller if it came with software and it does not :-(My Samsung SSD came with a piece of (probably proprietary) software called Drive Magic...
As far as I can remember all I did was install the SSD in a spare slot and it did the rest.
Helpful, I know
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Yes, it's pretty much as simple as you say.
What I did was:
1) Take the old disk out, hang it in a caddy, restart (from the old disk in the caddy). Shut down.
2) Install the new SSD in the machine. Restart.
3) Clone old disk to new disk. Shut down.
4) Disconnect caddy from machine. Restart.
Hopefully, bingo!
Pretty sure I used macrium as well.
There are freeware disk cloning tools - I seem to remember I used one called Ghost, but I might be wrong about that.
M.
I found out that you can download the Samsung "Magician" free of charge. It only works on Samsung SSDs, allegedly.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
I used HD Clone although that struggled with smaller sized drives (despite the drive not being full...)
One point on using clone tools I have found is they can stop (when doing a block level copy) if they find a bad block (although the drive itself has excluded the block from use) so I think these tools work best on SSD upgrades on fairly new computers.
I used the samsung Magician software with a Samsung SSD. It works eventually after a lot of faffing about and cryptic error messages that are not explained online. The Samsung software kept failing with error messages so we first shrank the partition with the windows disc manager tool. This still didn't allow Samsung magician to work so further Googling revealed a freeware program that would finally shrink the source partition enough to allow it to work. Will try to remember what is was called and update the post later...
This was what we used to shrink the partition (750GB drive going down to a 250G SSD):
http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html
Last edited by Gruntfuttock; 26th July 2016 at 18:42.
I used to be the IT manager at my old company (~65 PCs) so I've done my fair share of clones. I used to use a product called Acronis TrueImage, never gave me a problem. Not free, but the single licence version is currently Ł20, which sounds reasonable value to me.
http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/personal/computer-backup/
Cheers,
Plug
I would take the opportunity to test my backup recovery rather than just imaging it across. Good simulation of what would happen if your drive died, plus if it doesn't work you can just put the old drive back and work out why.
Another vote for Acronis, I have used it several times to clone drives and have never had a problem.
Although you have to pay for a license the back up feature is well worth it.
Another thumbs up for Acronis or you could try a disk duplicator dock as they are relatively cheap now.
Cheers
Simon
Ralph Waldo Emerson: We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.
Really easy - if I can do it, anyone can!
You’ve only 130GB of data, irrespective of logical drive size – and as cloning only ever copies data, not free space, then as long as the second drive has that much space +10%, at least, then you’ve nothing to be concerned about.
Just remember to retain the old drive for a while, whilst you make sure the cloned data has all be transferred without any corruption – then you can ditch it or keep it as an emergency boot disk.
I did it yesterday afternoon and it was pretty straightforward. The "Magician" software told me what changes I needed to make before I started (never even heard of AHCI mode). A few reboots while it downloaded drivers and then the cloning took about 35 minutes.
If you're thinking of installing a SSD drive, I can only say "do it". I got this one off eBay and it was quite a bit cheaper than Amazon.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3318832124...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Just check you have all the partitions on the SSD that you had on the original drive - you may need something like Macrium to see this if Windows Disk management doesn't show them all.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
I found that the Magician software didn't copy over all the partitions because I had a C & D partition in addition to the System & a hidden Recovery partitions. If you have lost the Recovery partition you won't be able to do a reinstall/recovery in the future unless you have a Windows disc.
That's the model I added nine months ago though I treated myself to a 1TB model from Amazon's Black Whateverday sales since my machine is a gaming rig. It's fast.
I just clicked on the recovery partition to add it and it's there on the SSD.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
Is the performance enhanced much? How noticeable is it? I've been thinking about this a while now
I run the operating system and office software etc from my SSD and keep data files on a convention HDD. 2 years down the road and it's still very fast.
One thing to note, if you run an automatic defrag programme make sure it leaves the SSD alone.
^
True, never defrag and never erase (as opposed to emptying the Recycle Bin, which is safe) files on SSDs: it'll drastically shorten their lives.
From where I'm sitting, yes, they're fabulous. The biggest change you used to be able to make was increasing the RAM, today it's SSD. How noticeable? Press the button and about 20 seconds later you're using the machine.
Last edited by catch21; 30th July 2016 at 13:53.
It's probably the most cost effective change you can make to a PC, especially a laptop. Just do it, as the advert says.
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 17". I don't use it a great deal and I wouldn't say it's slow at all. It's actually very good still.
I'm not sure if it would increase my usage of the machine.
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