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Questions regarding cloning a hard drive

S

steve wilson

Senior member
Hi,
It's been about 4 or 5 years since I cloned a hard drive so I would be grateful if someone could answer a few questions.

1) Is Acronis still the best software to use?
2) The hard drive I'm cloning is a 160GB maxtor that is on the brink of failure (I think), is it still a good idea?
3) Do I need to buy a 160GB hard drive to clone it to or do I need to a partition the exact right size?
4) Any other advice?

Thanks
Steve
 
If you feel the drive is failing, I don't recommend any imaging software like Acronis or Ghost. Rather, you should consider getting a full sector-by-sector clone with program that is capable of handling and logging read errors to allow multiple read passes, without killing your drive. The only software that I'm aware of that is able to do this is an open source program called ddrescue. However, it isn't necessarily user friendly if you are not somewhat comfortable working within Linux. A minor mistake of cloning the wrong direction with completely overwrite your hard drive with whatever is on the other drive...even if it is blank. So, be very, very careful. This needs to be done to a drive of equal or larger size.

If your end goal is to expand your drive to a larger drive, you can then use Acronis or Ghost to do this while copying from the clone to the new larger drive. The key here is to minimize the use of the failing drive and to make sure that you have a backup, should you run into issues with getting a new drive setup in your system.

Yes, I have seen the original drive completely fail after the initial image is created and then someone make a mistake and mess up the only copy they had when trying to get Windows to boot on the new drive. You can always cut corners, but by doing so, you assume the risk that comes with it.
 
Buy a 256GB SSD. It's cheap enough (~ $100) and you will see a huge performance jump.

You don't need best disk cloning software, you need one that works.

EaseUS Disk Copy or Minitool Drive Copy works perfectly, both are free.

But if the drive is dying, I would rather reinstall OS & copy old data to the new disk.
 
Cloning softwares such as Acronis/Ghost are designed to work with drives that are fully functioning. If you have a drive that have simple patch of unreadable errors, it would probably work fine. However, if its more than that, continuously reading error sectors can and will cause firmware failures and/or degrade the reading heads to the drive.

Data recovery cloning softwares are design to skip over these problematic areas and read other good areas first. Most will even allow you to image what you want first rather then waste time imaging /Windows or /Program Files. So if your drive is really failing and you have any valued data on the drive, you might want to contact a recovery company to do the cloning.
 
steve wilson said:
Hi,
It's been about 4 or 5 years since I cloned a hard drive so I would be grateful if someone could answer a few questions.

1) Is Acronis still the best software to use?
2) The hard drive I'm cloning is a 160GB maxtor that is on the brink of failure (I think), is it still a good idea?
3) Do I need to buy a 160GB hard drive to clone it to or do I need to a partition the exact right size?
4) Any other advice?

Thanks
Steve
Click to expand...

If the cloning software is not able to expand the volume during copying, a person can always do it manually.

P.S. Here is a video demonstration --> https://video.search.yahoo.com/vide...mozilla-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&tt=b
 
Last edited:
1) How to qualify what makes something 'Best' is contentious. I would go with easiest then accurate enough. My advice regardless is don't bother buying cloning software at 1st. When you buy your new drive chances are cloning software (usually from Acronis) is often available for free from the HDD/SSD manufacturer. The major guys (WD, Seagate, Intel & Samsung) do.

2) It's a good idea to copy off your most precious, irreplaceable files 1st, then run Seagate's SMART utility for a short-test (Last that I checked Seagate bought Maxtor) then proceed with the clone.

3) Any drive larger than 160GB will work.

4) If you are good with creating bootable USB/CD, make an ultimate boot cd and run the Seagate/Maxtor utility there to do the SMART short test.
 
XavierMace said:
Alternatively, you could go with a drive dock/duplicator:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392063

It has the restriction of not being able to clone to a smaller drive but works great and doesn't require any software or even a PC to do so. I've done half a dozen clones with mine.
Click to expand...

THIS.

I've used this (not this exact model) to salvage unbootable SSDs and HDDs alike. Since it's a dumb device, it doesn't care about what might be wrong with the data or data structure, it just copies it as is. I used to use my SATA/USB adapter to salvage data from people's disks, but sometimes Windows still couldn't access the data. Now I just duplicate to a second drive and then copy what I need. It's much easier and faster.

Obviously, if the drive is physically damaged, then it won't work.
 
I like to use the manufacturers migration software and am about to clone a drive myself to a new wd black 1.5tb hd that will be replacing two old hd's. I"m having problems booting with them installed even though they both pass smart the hitachi disappeared on me a little while ago.
 
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