clone a hard drive

[bombardier]

hello to all:

just thinking here, I know you can clone a hard drive. if I clone a hard drive that means it would clone w7 operating system and all the contents. that means that I would need a storage device for the clone hard drive so when I do get a har drive I can ake the clone and put that information on to the new hard drive thats an idea. if I get a new computer I can load the clone hard drive onto the new computer hard drive with w7 and all the contents and will be set to go flying or run an engine.

bombardier

[bombardier]

out of the following: acronis back up and recovery 11.5; macrium; shadow copy; clonezilla. I do not want disk image.

acronis I heard of; macrium thats a new one for me; shadow copy do not know anything about it; clonezilla i have read up on it.

bombardier

for some reason the forums is not letting me edit my posts thats why theres another post from me.otherwise I would edit the original post and put this one into the original.

[OldAirmail]

I used this to clone my old 500GB drive onto my SSD without any problems.




Apricorn SATA Wire Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit $20.

I know that it says for notebooks & USB 2.0, but it works on any computer that has USB 1.X or 2.0.


After swapping out the old hard drive for the SSD, I kept the 500 GB drive sitting in a box for 6 months incase there was a problem with the SSD.

Now I use the Acronis cable to connect the old drive to the computer for backups.


BTW - You can reuse the software on other computers. I looks lie the software is "keyed" to the Acronis cable.

[Sprocket]

if I get a new computer I can load the clone hard drive onto the new computer hard drive with w7 and all the contents and will be set to go flying or run an engine.

I am not sure if I understand you correctly, but I don't think you can do as quoted above.
You say " if I get a new computer I can load the clone hard drive onto the new computer hard drive with w7 and all the contents"

The thing is that during loading (installing) W7 or ANY OS during the build of a PC, the installation "looks" closely at the hardware it is finding, and then configures itself suitably to the machine hardware. ***(Note later)
Thus, a cloned OS in a NEW and DIFFERENT machine is not configured for THAT particular machine, and it all goes wrong.

What I am saying is that a cloned HD, with respect to the OS, can only work if placed back in the original machine.

If I did not understand you correctly, then I apologize.

(As for the note***. There are exceptions. HP supplies a range of office machines of which the HD's, with OS systems, are designed to be interchangeable. This is to help streamline the company IT in running the office.)

Jannie

[OldAirmail]

It's not really a problem nowadays.

If you tried popping a really old version of Windows into a new system you could have some trouble.

[bombardier]

hello to all: sprocket, oldairmail see if this is any clearer,

clone of the original hard drive that is what I mean. yeah,
ok see if this is any easier to understand I just thought that I can do this

I see where you guys are; the new hard drive is not in the built computer yet so if I cleared out the op sys of the new hard drive then I could put in the clone hard drive contents onto the new hard drive and then hook up the new hard drive up in the built computer.



what do you think?


bombardier

[Speed of flight]

Ok, I have cloned a hd before, and these are the problems I experienced:
1. If any components are different than what the HD was originally in, IE cloned the HD and stuff it in another PC, Windows will not like it.
It takes an image of the PCs hardware, and tries to detect piracy. Every time I update the motherboard and/or CPU, I must format and reinstall windows. Just another step, but sheesh. 2. The cloned HD will be EXACTLY like the other one: Meaning, you should probably remove one, as the PC may start to annoy you with questions at startup such as which one is the primary/master drive.
3. If the master has a corruption problem or a virus/malware, than you've just copied all that to a new drive.

When replacing an old drive with a new one, problems can arise. I found it helpful to copy all my files to another HD, compress when available, and migrate them back slowly. Much less troublesome in my case.

Hope that helps, see you up there!

[OldAirmail]

I'm wondering if there is some kind of misunderstanding here.

The purpose of cloning a primary drive is, usually, to move it to a larger/faster hard drive. And/or into a new computer.


If it's only to move the OS to a newer/faster/larger hard drive on the same system, there should be no problems at all. Not even having to confirm Windows validation.

Whenever I've cloned the old drive to a newer drive AND put it back into the SAME COMPUTER, there has been no need to revalidate Windows.

Windows authentication is only needed if there are two or more system changes. And I've even avoided that in the past by - cloning the hard drive, starting the computer up, shutting it down, AND THEN replace the second piece of hardware.

Every time I update the motherboard and/or CPU, I must format and reinstall windows.

Whatever it is that you are doing, it is not cloning.



In the past, when I wanted to move my OS to a completely new computer I clone the primary drive first & restart the old computer with the new, cloned drive in place of the old drive. Windows will then accept that it's the samy OS on the same computer. Only the hard drive has changed.

AFTER testing the cloned drive in the old system, I then put the new cloned hard drive into the new system. When you start the computer up for the first time, Windows will do two things.

First, it'll fined updated drivers for the new hardware, if needed. It'll probably need to be restarted a time or two.

Second, it'll call up product activation/authentication for the OS.



When you clone a hard drive NOTHING is changed on the old drive.

After removing the old drive, put it aside. If a problem develops with the new drive, you can just pop it into the computer.



If anyone finds it too difficult, they should probably take the computer to a computer shop to replace/upgrade the drive.

It's not rocket science.

It is very easy, but you do need to know what you're doing.

[Sprocket]

It is very easy, but you do need to know what you're doing.

So its not exactly plug and play then? ......... Well, that's exactly what Speed of light and myself was trying to convey to Bombardier in the original question.

I am not a confrontational type of person, but I take strong exception to you telling us "its not rocket science". That's a damn insult.

Who I am I?
R+D Software engineer National Instruments Labview for NPD and data capturing on the development of new medical diagnostics and medical equipment.
Software programmer Microchip MPLABS.
(And a load of other certifications I won't even bother about)

In the end I know all too well how Windows can trip you up. And that is where I am coming from.

[OldAirmail]

It is very easy, but you do need to know what you're doing.

So its not exactly plug and play then? ......... Well, that's exactly what Speed of light and myself was trying to convey to Bombardier in the original question.

I am not a confrontational type of person, but I take strong exception to you telling us "its not rocket science". That's a damn insult.

Who I am I?
R+D Software engineer National Instruments Labview for NPD and data capturing on the development of new medical diagnostics and medical equipment.
Software programmer Microchip MPLABS.
(And a load of other certifications I won't even bother about)

In the end I know all too well how Windows can trip you up. And that is where I am coming from.

Sorry to get your dander up, and maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

So let me rephrase this: "USING" commercial cloning software, such as Apricorn, is about as simple as can be.

Can EVERYONE do it?

No. But I think that most of the people on this forum are smart enough to do it.



In the past I've used Clonezilla, Macrium, and Norton Ghost to clone drives. Apricorn and Norton are a walk in the park compared to the first two.

And of those two, Apricorn and Norton, Apricorn is the easiest.

So its not exactly plug and play then? ......... Well, that's exactly what Speed of light and myself was trying to convey to Bombardier in the original question.

And I agreed with you on that point. What am I missing in this complaint?



There is only one statement that you made with which I can, somewhat, disagree;

Thus, a cloned OS in a NEW and DIFFERENT machine is not configured for THAT particular machine, and it all goes wrong.

ANY procedure can go wrong.

But I've replaced computer components from 1993 till now.

Let me count on my fingers and toes.

Done. I've been doing it for 20 years. (I knew that if I tried hard enough that I could do it)

From Windows XP on, I've placed cloned drives, as described above, in new computers that I've built without any MAJOR problems other than having to update drivers. And most of the time the Windows OS did that.

As for Windows 98 and before? Yes. You did have to be careful how you did it.

I am not a confrontational type of person, but I take strong exception to you telling us "its not rocket science". That's a damn insult.

OK, I give up.

In what way do you, personally, feel insulted by my saying "its not rocket science"?

I'm not telling people to write their own cloning software. Or to do it by hand.

Do you think that using commercial software is to dangerous for people without your vast amount of knowledge and experience?

If that's the case then, to some degree, you are right. I've known people who should not be permitted to look at the files on their hard drive.



"HEY! I don't remember putting these files on my computer. Let's just delete them."

And I'm not kidding about that one.

I knew a lawyer back in the '90s who did just that.


Then there was the accountant who came rushing in to tell me that her computer was going crazy!

When I followed her back to her office, I went right to work!

I lifted her purse off the keyboard.

That was the easy part.

The hard part was not laughing. You don't want to tick off the person responsible for generating the checks.



As I said, I'm sorry to have set you off, but that was not my intention.

ALL of the highlighting, italic, underlining, bold & capitalized text, etc WAS NOT AIMED AT YOU!.

In fact NONE of it was.

GET A LIFE.

Former Microsoft MCSE

[Sprocket]

GET A LIFE.

OldAirmail, reading through this thread again from top to bottom, I have to agree with you as any reasonable person would do, to "get a life",

I am sorry for the direction I have pulled this thread into, and now I absolutely regret having been so hyper about, what is actually, a commonly used phrase.

There are no excuses for my behavior, and with that I hope you will accept my apologies in all of this.

Likewise, I would like also to apologize to any forum member who may have read this thread whom I may have offended.....
I intent no disrespect to this forum or any of its readers or members.
And no disrespect to yourself.......

[Bass]

Nice said Sprocket.
We are all freinds taking a flight

[OldAirmail]

I've enjoyed and respected your posts.


Sprocket, there really was nothing in the post that you objected to, that was directed to you.

Looking back at the offending post, you'll see a lot of sentences, phrases, and even single words that have everything from a simple emphasis, up to "over the top" HEAVY emphasis.


That's a fault/quirk of mine. If you were to look back at some of my posts, even to the earliest ones, you'll see the same over emphasis, time and time again.

REF 1, REF 2, and so on. I'll even do it with short posts like this one - How I salvaged my Saitek yoke.

This even occurs in silly discussions. My inanity knows no bounds.


I suspect that it's this style of writing that has offended. But whether it's the style (or the lack thereof), or my rude words, I too have to apologize. You are one of the better posters on this site, and you are appreciated.

BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE HAVE TO AGREE!!!!!!!!!!

See! It's uncontrollable.

[OldAirmail]

hello to all:

just thinking here, I know you can clone a hard drive. if I clone a hard drive that means it would clone w7 operating system and all the contents. that means that I would need a storage device for the clone hard drive so when I do get a har drive I can ake the clone and put that information on to the new hard drive thats an idea. if I get a new computer I can load the clone hard drive onto the new computer hard drive with w7 and all the contents and will be set to go flying or run an engine.

bombardier

bombardier, we've made a mess of sorts here.

Let's just say that the purpose of cloning is, usually, to move your operating system, AND data, to a new drive.

Depending on your abilities, this may be simple. BUT if you mess up, you could loose just about everything.

If in doubt, pay someone who knows what they're doing to transfer everything to the new drive.

In the past I've put the new drive back into the computer that the old drive came from with out problems.


But on the other hand - When I was young, I used to juggle knives, eggs, plates, etc. (I once wanted to be a stage performer, but that's another story. )