Switching Hard Drive

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swanysto

Golden Member
May 8, 2005
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I think this is the right section for this. I have a work computer from Dell. It is bordering on 5 years old I believe. There are no signs of any problems, but I have a lot of information on my computer that is crucial to the company. We are a small company, so we cannot afford nice backup software and servers. Long story short, I would like to replace the hard drive with a new one, just to be safe. I was searching for options. And I plan on creating a windows image with the backup software included with Win7. I will put that image on our "server"(a windows 7 machine that is used to backup paperwork and also used as a print server).

So I was wondering if I bought a new hard drive, installed my fresh legal copy of windows, could I just restore that image and my computer is the same as it was prior? I would just move files over, but the software I use creates a vast amount of link to files and folders, so it would just be a complete pain to re-link all those.

Will this work, or do I need to look for alternate options?

TIA
swany
 
pauldun170

pauldun170

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2011
9,493
5,708
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What budget do you have for this?
What OS is your current PC running?
How many PC's do you have in the office? How many active users?
Are there any programs installed exclusively to your PC that need cannot be readily installed elsewhere?
What kind of network do you have? Is it gigabit?
How far apart are all the PC's (cable length?)
Do you have wireless?


You can put together a nice safe, low maintenance solution fairly easy using basic windows 7 boxes and an external drive (NAS or lowly USB) as long as its a small office.
 
Engineer

Engineer

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
39,230
701
126
Blain said:
Clone it and it's done.
Click to expand...

This. Use the cloning software that comes with many drives (free version of Acronius) or download something like Macruim Reflect. Install the new drive along with the old drive, format the new drive and simply clone the drive using the cloning software. Shut down the system, replace old drive with new drive and boot. Should be good to go (other than might have to increase size of partition if using something like Macruim Reflect as it only clones a partition to the size of the original drive (easy to resize using disk management of Windows)).
 
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swanysto

Golden Member
May 8, 2005
1,949
9
81
Engineer said:
This. Use the cloning software that comes with many drives (free version of Acronius) or download something like Macruim Reflect. Install the new drive along with the old drive, format the new drive and simply clone the drive using the cloning software. Shut down the system, replace old drive with new drive and boot. Should be good to go (other than might have to increase size of partition if using something like Macruim Reflect as it only clones a partition to the size of the original drive (easy to resize using disk management of Windows)).
Click to expand...

Ok, I think I will try that. Thanks. I am going to stick with a 500gb hard drive, which is what came in the machine, so I shouldn't have any issues. I am only using like 150gb anyway.
 
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Concillian

Diamond Member
May 26, 2004
3,751
8
81
Blain said:
Clone it and it's done.
Click to expand...

This.

If you don't have cloning software, download a linux ISO that boots, any distribution will do, you're only going to do 2 simple commands in a terminal..
Boot to it on either USB stick or CD, open a terminal and type

sudo fdisk -l

to verify which drive is which. The output will tell you that /dev/sda is XYZ drive and /dev/sdb is ABC drive, so you can verify what the OS is calling each drive. Make a note of which letter corresponds to which drive.

Then type
sudo dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/sdy bs=1M

"dd" is the command for disk duplication

"if" is the input or source (old drive). Replace x with the letter you noted earlier with the fdisk command.

"of" is the output or destination (new drive.... must be as large or larger than source drive). Replace y with the letter you noted earlier with the fdisk command.

"bs=1M" is not strictly necessary, but will VASTLY speed up the process, this tells it to copy in 1MB chunks. Without this command it will copy in tiny little 512 byte chunks, which causes so much seeking that the speed of transfer becomes painfully slow, things will take maybe 4 times longer than copying with larger chunks.

This will clone one drive to another, including the MBR and boot sectors. It doesn't care what file system or encryption is on the drive, it makes an exact bit by bit copy.

My experience is this tends to copy at around 100 MB / sec, which is close to the limit of the hard drives. So 500 GB takes a little over an hour. There is no status bar, you just leave it and it keeps going. The command doesn't know if space is empty or full, it will copy everything, even blank space, so estimate time based on the max capacity.

Now your drive is cloned exactly. You can use the windows partition software to grow the partition to the size of the new drive.

This is pretty simple to do, and for the average user, is completely adequate and will save the expense of cloning software. I didn't realize there is a free version of Acronis now, so maybe there isn't an expense anymore, but I've been cloning drives this way when I upgrade and don't want to re-inistall for like 15 or 20 years.
 
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Concillian

Diamond Member
May 26, 2004
3,751
8
81
Blain said:
I like EaseUS Disk Copy for cloning my own drives.
Click to expand...

Technically not legal for him to use the free version in this case, since he would be cloning a drive for his work.
I don't know if the free version of Acronis is legal for business use, I suspect not.

The linux way is completely and legally free for all uses.
 
dank69

dank69

Lifer
Oct 6, 2009
37,358
32,990
136
I am planning on cloning my wife's 250GB drive to a new 240GB SSD. Do I need to resize the partition first? I think she only has ~80GB used. If I have to resize the partition, what is a good free option to do that in XP?
 
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Blain

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
23,643
3
81
dank69 said:
I am planning on cloning my wife's 250GB drive to a new 240GB SSD. Do I need to resize the partition first? I think she only has ~80GB used. If I have to resize the partition, what is a good free option to do that in XP?
Click to expand...
In that situation I would delete all unnecessary files, uninstall any unused programs, scan and clean the drive with a combo of Ccleaner (free version) and PureRA.
I'd then defragment and optimize the drive with Auslogics Disk Defrag (free version).
After it all was cleaned up and cut down to a minimum I's use EaseUS Disk Copy (free home edition).
As I remember remember it, if the capacity of the destination drive is smaller than the source the program will warn you and tell you that some files may not be copied.
Since the drive was purged and optimized, there should be only empty space at the end of the drive.
 
Denithor

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
6,298
23
81
Apricorn full enclosure $25AR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817155602

Apricorn drive adapter $14AR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812161004

Either of these will work, the enclosure is a quite durable metal case that's nice to have if you want to use your old/replaced HDD as a backup drive. Both come with the Apricorn software.

One other advantage of this software that I noticed tonight while cloning an old T40p drive - you can select which data/folders you want to copy during the clone. So if moving from a larger HDD onto a smaller SSD, if everything doesn't fit, no need to delete stuff - simply skip some stuff during the clone.
 
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