The HDD on my desktop computer is getting noisy. As part of my backup procedures, I regularly clone it to an external HDD. If I swap the two drives, will the cloned version be bootable straight off, or do I have to do other things as well?
If the clone is exact, then yes. Are the source and destination drives identical? What software do you use to clone?
I cloned HDD to SSD using Macrium Reflect and it worked perfectly.
If it is an exact clone it should be bootable straight off. The thing to watch out for is that some "exact copy" cloning software doesn't always copy some exotically formatted manufacturers recovery partitions.
It is worth inspecting the partitions before and after the swap to check for idfferneces. I have recently cloned my spinning rust disk onto a
500GB Samsung 850 SSD and then swapped it into the boot position quite happily. You can get quite cheap USB to SATA drive interfaces.
Would the MBR need to be included in the cloning in addition to any partitions in case the MBT entries are in a different order?
THt depends entoteluy on what you man by 'clone'
In most cases I have found the answer to be 'no'
Especially with Windows. Copy protection etc.
It's a bit easier on Linux, although you do have to relabel the disk or change the instructions in the boot configurations files. Took me te best part of a day to do it last time, during wich time I learnt more about GRUB than I ever wanted to.
The trouble is that with SATA there is no real concept of a 'physical' port so disks are identified by what information is stamped on them in the labelling proess, so you must relabel such disks as well as cloning not just the file system, but the boot sectors as well.
Every disk is supposed to have a UUID -Universally Unique Identifier - that can't be changed, and so is every partition, those those can be. To avoid copying, when you clone a disk you dont clone the UUID. and the OS detects that and gets upset.
I think there are tools to change the UUID - there certainly are for partitions, in Linux, and that is enough to bootstrap onto a new system but windows? I dunno.
Easy way is to remove the drive and fit it and the new one to another computer. And clone it there, when not being used for the computer OS. That way you can use pretty well any free cloning software with success.
I have cloned one which was in use, but had to pay for the single use software. All under Win7. Others may well be different.
A bit wise copy of the whole (unmounted) device using dd used to work at least sometimes, but the last time I tried was before SATA, so I don't know if it still does. I suspect that this newfangled secure boot stuff would probably defeat it too.
IME, up to XP at least ,the OS can't be bothered.
However single user Ghost does let you know, just so you know it knows, that you're cloning/imaging this particular C drive onto an awful number of discs. It actually maintains a record.
So yes, cloning doesn't alter the UUID (if that's what its called) but windoze up to XP at least, doesn't seem to care.
michael adams
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I invested in an Icybox 2 bay disk cloner. Does the job nicely. Just bung both drives in press the buttons and do something else while it does the business.
OK, I see more info is needed.
I'm using AOMEI Backupper, selecting Clone, then Disk Clone.
The source disk and destination disk are not the same size.
AOMEI reports the source disk as follows:
Disc 0 232.83GB
3 partitions:*: Recovery :5.76GB NTFS :4.14GB
*: System :300MB NTFS :36.17MB C: Windows :226.77GB NTFS :60.39GBWhen starting the cloning process, I get the following warning: "Note: there may be a boot or system partition on this destination disk, if you clone to this destination disk, this could lead that the existing bootable partition on the destination disk does not boot."
I use the same destination disk each time, overwriting the previous cloning, which may include the bootable partition and hence that warning. Anything on the destination disk, partitions, data etc is overwritten.
After cloning, AOMEI reports the cloned disk as follows:
Disk 1 149.05GB
3 partitions:E: Recovery :4.95GB NTFS :4.14GB F: System :682.5MB NTFS :37.53MB G: Windows :143.43GB NTFS :46.56GB
When I examine the cloned disk using a simple free disk analyser (Disktective) it tells me that the system partition on the cloned disk, F:, is a boot, but I don't know how reliable that information is.
I suppose the obvious way to find out if the clone will boot is to take out the original disk and plug in the clone. But that means digging around inside the computer, which always makes me nervous, and I'd like to get advice first.
I've upgraded several Windows 10 PCs from HD to SSD simply by cloning (I happen to use Acronis TrueImage) and have never had a problem.
That's what I used - it came as single use with the SSD I bought. And did work on a HD which was in use as an OS one.
Not sure how much the software costs, though, on its own.
However Drive Image XML which was free cloned an HD which wasn't in use at the time (I have dual boot on that PC - XP and Win7) Substituting the new for old worked as normal.
I bought a Kingston SSD which came with Acronis, during the clone process it came up with a bunch of errors, then at the end it announced it had been successful ... needless to say booting failed ... so I used a live Linux USB stick to shrink the HD partitions and "dd" to copy them to SSD and everything was fine.
OK - I've used it twice with two new SSDs with success.
More disinformation from TNP. He will deliberately choose a method that doesn't work just so he can complain about windows.
Every drive I have cloned has worked first time with windows. Most drives come with free software to clone a windows drive, but you may have to download it.
If you have done a drive image style clone, then yup they should be interchangeable.
Same here - except hundreds of times... the omly time I have had difficulties is when the source drive is failing and has unreadable sectors.
When you clone, the MBR is typically copied as well (its a "whole disk" copy operation, not just a partition copy one). The only issue you can run into sometimes is when cloning and resizing partitions at the same time, you could end up moving the boot partition out of the range of cylinders accessible to a bootable MBR partition. (normally the cloning software would warn you if this is likely)
'Copy protection' Hahaha!
Yup. My Dad used to say 'More harm is done by people who don't know they don't know than those who do'.
Of course, but we can all do that when we don't fully know what we are doing etc (like me with OSX / Linux etc)?
I won't say 'every time' because some of the source drives have been failing but in general you are correct.
Further, when I was in IT training we used to regularly (like every Friday) re-image circa 160 PC's with various (mostly Windows based) images and with no issues whatsoever (either over the LAN or locally from boot CD/DVD's).
Pop DVDs into 16 machines, hitting reset as you did so and by the time you had done the last machine the first was re-imaged. ;-)
We used to use Ghost in the Training Centre and I have used it for years. I also used Acronis and did so recently a few times whilst imaging a std drive onto a SSD (and small SSD to bigger SSD etc).
Cheers, T i m
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