Cloning my hard drive (desktop, hd, bios, screen)

[margaretBartle]

I have a tower desktop computer that I bought about nine years ago, with a 1TB hard drive, Windows 8.1, and I'm thinking I'd like to replace the hard drive, just as a precaution.


I like my computer the way it is, I've done a lot of work to set my computer up the way I like it, and I don't want to buy a new computer or update the OS.


I just want to replace my hard drive with a newer one.


I don't really trust the local computer repair shop, so that's one issue. It seems they have turn-over problems, and I've had some sketchy experiences with them. I'm not sure if it's an ethics issue or a skills issue.


So I have two questions:
1) is this a complicated issue? It's seems like it should be pretty straight forward - cloning a hard drive seems like it's pretty straight forward, but I'm hesitant to do it myself and I don't have the time to screw around with test computers until I feel comfortable enough to clone and replaces the HD in my real computer. Besides, I'm not confident in my ability to choose the correct replacement HD.

2) Hard drive technology has changed over the past ten years, I'll probably get a different kind of hard drive. Won't that make it impossible to do a clone? Isn't my computer set up for the specific kind of hard drive I'm using now. Won't I need different drivers?

[fishingupnorth]

Buy a 1TB Crucial SSD. They are around $55 on Amazon.
Download a free copy of Macrium Reflect. It will run in trial mode for 30 days. Make sure you uncheck the option to Register it when installing it.
Buy a USB to SATA cable and plug the new SSD into your PC.
Run Disk Manager and initialize the disk.
Start Reflect and say you want to Clone your existing drive.
Delete any partitions on the new SSD that were created when you initialized it.
Drag the partitions from your current drive down to the SSD and do the clone.
Once it is done open up your PC and take out the existing drive and install the SSD. You should be done.

Windows 8 often fails to clone. I would recommend you upgrade your system to Windows 10 before doing the clone. But you can try.

[Yelling_at_Birds]

Super simple with the right tool. Plug that little guy into a spare SATA port on the target system, then boot up a gigachad OS like Trisquel from a prepared USB drive. Run the following command:

dd status=progress conv=sync,noerror /dev/old_drive_to_be_copied /dev/new_drive_to_copy_to

And just wait a little while.

[Paul_G]

You don't mention the brand of the PC, so I'm just throwing this out...
I recently was attempting to clone a relative's existing HDD to a new SSD (Samsung EVO, in this case).
The PC was an HP all-in-one (with touchscreen) that had originally been Windows 8 / 8.1 and had been upgraded through the upgrade program to Windows 10 Home Edition.
I transfered all of the PC files / folders to a spare drive as a backup.
I loaded Acronis True Image software (have used it many, many times for my machines with a couple of different OS's without issue) and used a caddy that went in place of the PC's optical drive (once again, have used these many times) and then attempted to clone. It went so far in the process, but failed every time.
In doing some research for that specific PC, found that it uses Secure Boot. It was suggested to go into BIOS, disable this and try again - still failed - every time.
Further digging indicated that other users had the same problem. One thread indicated that the issue might have been a problem with EVO SSD's; that user happened to have a couple of drives from different manufacturers and they managed to get it to finally clone with one of them. I don't recall the brand that worked, but I don't believe it was one of the more common (Samsung, Crucial, Kingston, etc.).
In my case, we decided to just do a clean install of Windows 10 (and hopefully clean out some of the accumulated junk from the upgrade). Didn't need a product key as everything set up automatically after the PC was run and accounts logged into. We then moved all of the files / folders from the old system to the new drive. The old HDD was set aside.
If you haven't experienced it, the performance increase is quite impressive when going from a HDD to SSD.
One thing to note that we experienced was that on-line backups (One Drive and iCloud, in this case) appeared to start backing up everything again even though everything on the old drive was already backed up.

[margaretBartle]

Originally Posted by fishingupnorth

Once it is done open up your PC and take out the existing drive and install the SSD. You should be done.

I've tried doing this before, and it was not a slam-dunk. It took me several days to get it right, and I don't have that kind of time now. We're talking about my production machine.

I'm wondering if I could do everything down to this part, and take the computer and new SSD loaded with my data to the computer shop and pay them to do the swap-out?

Is there anything they could screw up if I do that?

Originally Posted by fishingupnorth

Windows 8 often fails to clone.

Would I know before installing the new SSD if this cloning did not work? If the new SSD with my data was put into an external case and plugged into a USB port on my desktop, and my computer reads it, can I assume the cloning worked, and then take it in to have them swap out the two drives?

Or do I need to do a comparison of directory sizes to confirm the clone was OK?

[MidValleyDad]

What would you do if your disk died? Do you have good full backups? Use this as a test of your recovery strategy. Remove your old drive, install the new one and proceed as if your old drive had died. If you hit a point where you cannot proceed you can re-install your old drive, fix the problem with your backup and try again. It is much better to find problems with your backup procedure in a controlled situation than after a real failure.


I will say I wonder about running a production system, especially if it is internet connected on Windows 8. Is it still supported with security updates by Microsoft?

[TurcoLoco]

There are two main cloning methods/options:
- Software based
- Hardware based

Both have their PROs and CONs.

Software based ones can encounter more issues due to their requirements (they actually analyze the source drive and filesystem as well as the condition of the drive itself)
So, software based cloning can give and error or fail due to a software as well as a hardware problem.

Hardware based cloning would not care about any software issue, malware infection, partition size or disk fragmentation. As long as the hard drive itself is in good condition, it does the sector-by-sector copying just fine. The health of the Source and Target drive are the most important two factors.

If the target drive was partitioned and formatted previously by the user, the sector size might be the only concern as most cloning devices might have a limitation of accepting only specific size sectors such as 512 bytes and 4,096 bytes (you would have to check its manual).
If the target drive is brand new and not formatted (typically they are not), then you are good to go.

Hardware based cloning might be more ideal for most home users as the same hardware is used for cloning typically doubles as a USB Docking station to access any supported hard drive as an external storage.


Now, to answer your question: No cloning method is 100% guaranteed to work post operation!
Ultimately, you have to remove the old one and connect the new one and plug in the power cord and fire it up to test.


Here is an example of an inexpensive USB 3 based cloning device that costs less than $30.

PROs of Hardware cloning:
- Either works or doesn't. If the process completed 100%, it should work just the same way as the old drive worked but presumably faster if it is a faster drive
- No configuration or adjustment necessary, as long as the Target (New) drive is same size or larger, it is as simple as pushing the button on the dock to clone a drive (no computer is even necessary!)
- Inexpensive
- Also works as a docking station to use with supported drives so it can be used as an external storage media

CONs of hardware cloning:
- Typically slower, larger the drive the longer it is likely to take
- No way to adjust the partition sizes during the operation (to adjust the partition sizes, a 3rd party software is needed)

What I would recommend doing all these prior to using any type of cloning:
- Disable/deactive and hibernation/sleep mode
- Make sure there is no malware infection
- Run CheckDisk to fix filesystem, crosslinked files and mark/fix bad/weak sectors
- After running CheckDisk (aka ScanDisk), analyze the drive fragmentation to make sure it is less than 3%, if not defrag the (source/old) drive

Important: NEVER boot the computer with both the source and the newly cloned target drive connected in the same computer. Both drives would be bootable and identical in every way including the SID#, so it is a big NO-NO.

Once the new drive is confirmed to be working OK, the source (old) drive can be connected using the USB Dock to be formatted/blanked out in order to use as a backup drive or whatever.

I'd strongly advice to NOT do anything with the old drive. Just keep it as is as a backup only. Get another new/blank drive to use as storage, if needed.

Final note: Albeit being much slower, to clone a drive to use in the same exact machine, hardware based cloning can be more practical for most.
I didn't get into software based cloning because it has been covered on the forums before (please search for it).

[Peregrine]

I agree with FUN, keep it simple.

Originally Posted by fishingupnorth

Buy a 1TB Crucial SSD. They are around $55 on Amazon.
Download a free copy of Macrium Reflect. It will run in trial mode for 30 days. Make sure you uncheck the option to Register it when installing it.

This is included for you when you buy a Crucial drive. They explain it very well and have videos every step.
https://www.crucial.com/support/ssd/...part-1-prepare

Buy a USB to SATA cable and plug the new SSD into your PC.

This is the exact one I have, https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Exter...NsaWNrPXRydWU=

Run Disk Manager and initialize the disk.

When doing a clone this isn't needed.

Start Reflect and say you want to Clone your existing drive.

Yep.

Delete any partitions on the new SSD that were created when you initialized it.

If you skipped the part up there, you can skip this too.

No need to do this either:

Drag the partitions from your current drive down to the SSD and do the clone.

And then:

Once it is done open up your PC and take out the existing drive and install the SSD. You should be done.

And voila.

It's very easy to do. It's almost impossible to screw up. The only way you can seriously screw it up is if you clone the EMPTY hard drive to the one you actually want to clone. If something fails along the way, your original disk will be unharmed.

[TurcoLoco]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

This is the exact one I have, https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Exter...NsaWNrPXRydWU=

That adapter will work just fine but only for 2.5" SSDs. For 3.5" HDDs which typically requires more power, something like this is more suitable.

This is actually what I have and I can use it without the included USB 3 cable to do offline cloning from a HDD/SSD to another new drive. This adapter actually works a little faster than the docking station type I have.

[Peregrine]

Looking at my link again I do see it says only 2.5. Not clear on why. Although I've now noticed it isn't the exact one I have. Looks identical but not that brand.
In any event, Turco's 1st link looks way nicer, way more durable. The second is for the hardcore nerd.