What's the secret to cloning an OS HD?

[Doomer]

I have a USB HD docking station / HD copier that will copy HD's even if it's not Hooked up to a computer. The cloned HD will not boot.

I've tried various various utilities and the ONLY one that I have found that works is Mini Tool Partition Wizard. All others result in a non bootable HD.

What exactly is it that MTPW does that the others do not??

And why the heck would someone want to copy an OS drive and not have the copy bootable??

 

[corkyg]

Copying and cloning are not necessarily the same. To be bootable, the HDD's MBR needs to placed correctly. Good cloneware places it as the final action of the operational sequence. I have been making bootable cloned drives for over 12 years, and never had one that failed to boot. I have a few simple rules:
1. Always clone using bootable media so as not to involve the source OS.
2. Select source and target drives manually.
3. If the drive sizes are different, use the proportional setting.
4. Proceed and have the system power down when done.
5. Disconnect the source drive's power.
6. Boot the new drive.

 

[tommo123]

marcium - free cloning app

 

[Rio Rebel]

I like Macrium Reflect: http://www.macrium.com/

But I need to try out this new "marcium" that tommo is talking about.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

marcium - free cloning app

Ideally, someone might comment on this whose brain is really saturated with the low-level hardware details.

I can only say that I've never had much trouble cloning boot/system disks with a variety of tools: Partition Magic goes back to the XP days, and there was another utility produced by VCOM software; Acronis Disk Director 11; and Acronis True-Image 2014.

I don't even think I ever had an "unsuccessful" clone session, but perhaps that's explained by the fact that I consider it to be a crucial and important operation and I don't make the menu choices haphazardly.

Whichever software you use, you want to clone the entire physical HDD, and I don't know (for cloning) if any other solution is possible.

Then there's the issue of the MBR and "signatures." Some software like Disk Director gives you the option of creating the new disk with the same signature as the old one. The software may -- or may not -- choose the proper option of turning the system off so you can remove one of these disks. Otherwise, trying to boot from two disks, the system will be temporarily unbootable. The solution to that is to insert the Windows installation DVD/CD, boot to the disc and choose the "Repair" option.

I just recently discovered that using True Image 2014 to clone an HDD to a brand new uninitialized SSD eliminates the possibility of misalignment. And that's nice -- too.

One more point. I had always followed my own instincts about cloning, and chose to use the bootable CD created by the software so that you don't involve Windows in the process. It also deals with the apprehension us old-timers might have for cloning an OS which is running and has open files.

However, in my WHS-2011 system, I recently installed True Image and cloned my HDD boot-system to a new SSD -- through the operating system and the True-image interface. No problem whatever.

 

[ichie]

I use backup tool from ghost to aomei backupper

 

[CakeMonster]

I'm getting a new SSD today, upgrading from a 240GB SandForce to 1TB Samsung EVO. What is the easiest, noob friendly way to transfer windows7 to be able to just continue using it like before but with the new disk? I don't have 2nd pc to plug them into. Do I need something else to boot from to be able to read the disk which is in use if I do it from windows?

 

[corkyg]

Don't do it from Windows. I have enumerated how to do it above. You don't need a 2nd PC when you use bootable cloning media. Just be able to see both drives at the same time. In your case, the software must support proportional cloning.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm getting a new SSD today, upgrading from a 240GB SandForce to 1TB Samsung EVO. What is the easiest, noob friendly way to transfer windows7 to be able to just continue using it like before but with the new disk? I don't have 2nd pc to plug them into. Do I need something else to boot from to be able to read the disk which is in use if I do it from windows?

Corky is right about this. If you buy or obtain the shareware version of cloning software, it will have a "bootable media creation" option or feature. Something like True Image has many more functions besides disk cloning. So you'd install the software in Windows together with the media creation plug-in, and then create the bootable CD.

With True Image 2014, I can guarantee: it should detect the new SSD and clone the source drive to it leaving the SSD in perfect alignment and ready to go.

I'd also say this: whatever cloning software you use, it should clone the entire disk. Thus, Windows 7 may have created a small "system reserved" partition on the same physical disk with the boot-drive "C:" and you obviously want both logical volumes cloned to the new SSD.

 

[Oyeve]

Acronis. Im in the middle of updating my companies PCs to win7 and I use Acronis religiously. Hasnt failed me yet. 3 licenses for 79 bucks.

 

[bonehead123]

I use Acronis religiously. Hasnt failed me yet. 3 licenses for 79 bucks.

^^^this^^^ :biggrin: :awe:

 

[Z15CAM]

GHOST SERVER v8 Corp_Bld 8.0.0.984 - PERIOD. - And it's FREE download from most College and University FTP, and heaven forbid, BBS, sites.

A very simple a 1.32Mb DOS WinME Boot to BackUp your WinOS in under 18 minutes and that's for one hell of a Big System running at 4 to 4.8Gb's and Dump or Over-Write Partinions even faster.

Any FAT, NTFS, GTP or Lunix table can be back up'd to Fat32 (No bigger then a 32GB) DOS Partitions but doesn't mean you can't split, extend, "BUILD" and browse with DOS GHOST.EXE bootable Fat32 BACKUP's.

My 2 useful BACKUP tools have been a WinME DOS Fat32 Boot containing the 1.32Mb GHOST.EXE app and using GUI App's like Ghost Explorer and Ghost32.EXE.

I can still boot Win3.1 6.1 or Win95B dumping GHOST IMAGINES under Win7 Diskpart.

Learn to use GHOST - It's just a matter of 4 or 5 CLKS to SAVE and Over-Write (DUMP) your OS.

I always keep a MicroSoft Win OS SYS-Prep reboot into Dos GHOST to dump a BackUp that will load onto any hardware platform.

I can prepare drives and Migrate an OS over a NetWork with GHOST SERVER v8 Corp_Bld 8.0.0.984: Prepare HDD' (Under Diskpart), Boot DOS,EFI Win Gui, Linux or BSD Boots... .etc. WTF is Ubuntu?

 

[Doomer]

Mission accomplished. I ordered a 480gb Seagate 600 for my main rig and moved the current 240gb Sandisk to another computer. This involved cloning both installs and MTPW handled it without a hitch and it did it from within Windows (but on another computer, not the one being cloned). Maybe doing it from DOS (or whatever the pre Windows state is called these days). But I guess I'll just stick with MTPW for now.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I just think that whatever floats your boat and works for you -- whatever you're comfortable with -- that's fine.

I had never had to contend with massive data loss of important (data) files. If I had to -- I'd simply do a logical folder & file copy from one NTFS disk to another (e.g., USB drive, eSATA -- hot-swap drive-bay and caddy).

I think maybe ten years ago, I might have had a situation that required simply re-installing Windows (XP). Ten years ago, I could suffer through a day's work (or more) to get things back in order.

But at some time, I'd built a system with Windows installed on a single hDD, and I wanted to move it to a RAID5 array on a 3Ware PCI-E controller. So I must have bought Partition Magic, or some such SW -- probably for less than $50 -- which many would say was "not a good deal." But it saved me a lot of misery. Next time I had to do something similar, I DID get a deal on Acronis Disk Director. Then (now), True Image. Maybe at one time, I had my sis-in-law buy a similar utility from VCOM, which had all the features you find with Acronis.

The one thing missing with True Image is really a problem with my WHS-2011 or probably any Windows server OS version. It doesn't "plug in" to the dashboard. But then, you're not going to do backups from a remote computer. Or you would schedule them to be automatic anyway -- to a NAS, some sort of backup server, or a mounted, online disk drive. I prefer a hot-swap backup disk, and I don't want to leave the backup disk running on my server. That means if I schedule automatic backups, I have to remember to mount the disk for the day the backup occurs.

Like I said -- whatever floats your boat.

 

[tinpanalley]

I'm trying to make sense of the instructions in my 840 EVO packaging and something in their beautifully illustrated instruction manual has confused me because it seems to imply that you have to connect the SSD to the desktop by way of a SATA-USB dock/adapter which I don't have. I was hoping I could just open the tower and connect the SSD to a free SATA connection and run Samsung's Migration tool. Do I really need an adapter now?
(The lack of info online about formatting a SSD tells me you probably don't format them?)

 

[lehtv]

I cloned a laptop HDD to an SSD recently by creating a backup image of the HDD, then restored it on the SSD. First I tried direct cloning using bootable Acronis but that failed, probably due to MBR not being placed correctly onto the target disk or something, I'm not sure. It worked when I used the backup image instead.

 

[SeanFL]

I too am a big time acronis user and was using it to restore 10 identical computers at my kids school.

Had a nicely crafted backup image of the entire hd. But when when I went to restore it on any machine...ended up getting various errors upon boot and the computer asking for the original windows install disc to do a repair.

Found some instructions that had me drop into dos from that screen, then try

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

that took care of it and they booted fine.

Is that the issue with mbr alignment mentioned above?

Sean

 

[DrGreen2007]

I use Ghost, never had luck with online cloning, etc.
I always boot to a WinPE drive, run Ghost to make an image of the PC, then swap drives, reboot to PE and run GHost to put the image back onto the new drive.
Plus then I have a backup..