OT: software to clone my hard drive to an SSD

[Murmansk]

I've just replaced my computer's hard disk with a 256gb Solid State Drive by Crucial - I cloned the hard drive onto the SSD while it was connected via the USB port, then put the SSD in in place of the hard drive.

All went well and I used a free trial of Macrium Reflect to do the cloning. I don't really want to pay the full 70 dollar price for a full version of Macrium but I'd like to make more disk images in future for backup purposes.

There are probably lots of free, or much cheaper, bits of software that do a similar job just as well and I wondered if anyone had any recommendations?

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Murmansk writes

etc

[Tim Watts]

Partition Magic is much cheaper.

Boot linux and use "dd" is free - assuming the target is the same or bigger size than the source disk. But to be fair, Partition Magic will do a better job as it's filesystem aware.

Or, again free but looks the job is:

I have not tried that but it looks decent.

[Toby]

I would recommend Clonezilla, I use it for cloning PC's at work, and it does the job well.

Make sure you read the prompts and select the correct drives though, you do not want to clone the new empty drive to your old one, thus wiping it!

[Toby]

Here is a YouTube video that shows what you need to do...

[Capitol]

I cloned a linux drive to SSD and it wouldn't boot. Haven't got back to the problem yet due to lack of time. However Clonezilla works perfectly with normal hard drives. Norton under DOS works OK for Windows machines.

[Adrian]

Used it many a time - works beautifully.

[PeterC]

Easus Partion Manager will do it. Easus backup and Acronis install services (I don't know about Macrium) that seem to slow the computer a bit. It took hacking in the Registry to get rid of Acronis' service.

I cloned my HDD yesterday with EPM - just have to follow the instructions about booting.

[Kevin H]

Wonder if you have considered doing a clean install (which is what I did wh en I introduced a 250Gb SSD)? Bit of a pain I know to re-install lots of st uff but an opportunity to get rid of all the dross you've collected over th e years. Also an opportunity to ensure you have just the key stuff on the S SD and everything else can go on your bigger HDD.

[PeterC]

That's a nightmare! I have 2 identical drives and the software doesn't show the Serial Nos. so I have to be very careful. Using SATA 1 for the drive to be copied will put it first, then select that one from Boot to be sure. Also, the software refers to the source drive as the cloned one! Poor translation I assume.

[dennis]

No, the source is the one that has been cloned, the copy is the clone.

The paragon free disk cloner appears to be able to work out which is the new disk without trouble, it also manages to rebuild the efi data so it boots properly if you have a newish machine.

[Lobster]

On 27 Feb 2015, Kevin H grunted:

That's what I did; it really wasn't too arduous. I don't think there's much doubt that Windows peformance gewnerally deteriorates over time (is there? - does with me anyway) and it's a good opportunity to start with a clean install.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Lobster writes

I've decided that it's a good idea to do a clean install (plus all the current updates, drivers etc, and an AV to keep it protected), and clone what you've got to a backup disk (or a partition on a backup disk). This way, you've got a spare virgin OS immediately at hand to clone back whenever you need it. Its a lot more convenient than doing a fresh installation. [My old clunker of a computer doesn't half belt along smartly with a virgin OS on board.]

[Ian Jackson]

Cloning a large drive is best done overnight.

With EaseUS Backup, I get the impression that it goes faster if you don't select 'Clone sector by sector' (still works OK). To keep your spirits up, it tells you the time elapsed and the estimated time to completion - although as the latter seems to be 'total time to complete' rather than 'time remaining', and keeps get longer and longer, until near to when the process is fairly rapidly coming to an end. If you want to leave it and go to bed, there's a "Shut down when finished box' you can tick.

Although it is well recommended, Acronis is not one I've tried yet.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. You need to be a bit smart. It wont boot because it will look in the boot disk for where its linux image is and chances are that will be in a hardware location that isn't where the new SSD resides.

Grub needs to be hand patched: then things start to work. Then grub can be updated properly once you have the ssd bootable.

In my case the problem was cloning from IDE to SSD SATA. And the way linux responded to various BIOS options.

Haven't got

[PeterC]

Yes, you're correct - that's what I meant to put, honest! I don't know if it's still like that in the latest version, but I did worry about the destination disk being referred to as the cloned one.

I'll have a look at that to see if it can differentiate. I've put the last 3 digits of the serial no. on each and 1 and 2 on them. Also labelled the SATA connectors I and II for SATAs 1 and 2.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've had the most success with cloning HDs using DriveImage XML. Which is free.