Question Anyone presently using EaseUS for cloning Windows?

[AntiHypocrite]

The part about Mac OS was an aside. I'm still being told that what I've done for years now can be done with a PC via Macrium Reflect. I'm presently using BIOS and Macrium Reflect. I've been at this for days now, so I really don't wish to waste time arguing about semantics.

Have a great evening.

 

[tcsenter]

After I exited MRF8, I restarted the M4700 and pressed the F12 key to access the M4700's BIOS Boot Options menu. Next, I used the arrow keys to find the actual Western Digital part number of the external HDD - which I was pleasantly surprised to see - and pressed ENTER.

As I mentioned in our DM, the big drive manufacturers offer a free disk copying/cloning/imaging application you can use with their products, in the case of Western Digital, it is a custom version of Acronis True Image for Windows that is customized to function if a qualifying Western Digital product is either the source or destination drive. In case the download link below is sessionized, here is the gateway link to select your product type first, and then scroll down to the section for downloading Acronis True Image for WD.

Direct download link (737MB) to Acronis True Image for Western Digital

User Manual for Acronis True Image (Western Digital)

Disk cloning is to create an exact duplicate of a drive, all data and structures (partitions, boot sectors). It results in an identical copy of the drive. Traditionally, this literally had to be drives of identical capacity but for many years now the software can negotiate some differences between the two drive capacities.

If I gave you the impression that you could BOOT directly from a disk FILE image or cloned disk across a USB external device, I apologize for the misunderstanding. I had troubles understanding what it was exactly that you wanted to do, it seemed you waffled some bit between a straight-forward cloning/duplication of one drive to another drive and saving a disk image to file. Here is my message:

Macrium Free does all of that. Only things I think are limitations are imaging or restoring over a network, using virtual disk images, and restoring to dissimilar hardware.

I understood you just want to create a backup or image of the M4700 as shipped, not a recurring backup solution. This can be done by acquiring an extra drive, cloning the M4700 to it either directly or from a disk image file. Then you can put the duplicate disk in a drawer for safe keeping. Or you can image the entire disk to a file, on USB drive or even DVD, create bootable rescue media, and put them all away for safe keeping.

Additionally, you can open/load/mount the image FILES using the Macrium program when it is installed on a PC, browse the contents of the image, extract or copy any files contained, but not BOOT from the image files. Windows does not support that, you'd need a special boot loader app or process that would handle/open the Macrium image files, which are NOT industry standard image files they are only readable by the Macrium executable.

OH and BTW, if you cloned the M4700 drive to the external USB drive, it would boot if you then REMOVE the drive from the external enclosure and install it in place of (or in addition to) the M4700 internal drive. But since the M4700 is no longer operational, I'm unsure what it is that you want to do. You already have now two copies of the M4700 drive; the M4700's internal drive and another in the external USB enclosure.

 

[AntiHypocrite]

OH and BTW, if you cloned the M4700 drive to the external USB drive, it would boot if you then REMOVE the drive from the external enclosure and install it in place of (or in addition to) the M4700 internal drive. But since the M4700 is no longer operational, I'm unsure what it is that you want to do. You already have now two copies of the M4700 drive; the M4700's internal drive and another in the external USB enclosure.

As the old M4700 is presently [employing my best German] "kaput," I'm no longer thinking about the old laptop ... or its cloned image, which I now believe is of no use.

Considering that we're down to only one PC now, the new Dell 7630 laptop, I want to find a PC cloning utility that will actually work the way that CCC works with our Macs. As I contuinue the hunt for an appropriate old PC [Win XP capable] laptop, I want to figure out which software we need to obtain a true cloned image of a PC's main system drive. Why? Because most of the old PC laptops that I'm seeing, at least the ones that fit our parameters, come loaded with either Win 10 or Win 11. Needless to say, I will be cloning any Win XX drive(s) we receive with the new [old] PC laptop to make way for [hopefully] Win XP SP X ...

... and , if I don't find another "Mrs approved" old PC laptop soon, I'll probably experiment with a Win XP VM in the Win 11 environment.

 

[socean.]

You can try and use free EaseUS but in my experience, I never would again.

We obtained the tech license and the PE bootable media was the most useless tool I’ve ever seen. I’ve used Hirens, Parted Magic and others that mostly succeeded. I tried EaseUS master both install and bootable, had continuous non sensical errors. Working with support, they spent 3 days with me trying to prove my stuff is at fault (I provided numerous photos for proof and things I did), which then slowly turned into “our product actually can’t do that but you do it this way kind of but it’s you”

Sorry. Mines probably less technical than supporting a poorly handled and advertised company.

Acronis True Image and Macrium reflect all the way. Rarely an issue and if there is, always fixed it.

 

[AntiHypocrite]

I eventually used Macrium Reflect to get the clone copy of Win 11, but I won't even bore you with all that happened when I tried to boot from the external drive containing the clone copy. In short, it was a disaster that we still haven't recovered from.

The mint Dell M4700 in question came to us with a working copy of Win 11 installed, but, after trying to boot from that external USB drive, we eventually lost all video. Two replacement mobos later, we still have the same issue. We'll eventually continue trying to shotgun our way to a solution, but we had to push the machine off to one side to prevent ourselves from destroying it!

 

[AntiHypocrite]

Yeah, "Wow," is a pretty honest reaction to this mess.