So I think it is time to replace the amazingly reliable 60 gig EIDE drive that houses my operating system with a nice new SATA TB drive*. I know Norton Ghost can do it, but are there any other programs that can clone my old drive to the new so I don’t need to reinstall everything?
Thanks!
*I’ll probably end up replacing my 180 gig old SATA drive, too
Acronis True Image is the other one oft-recommended around here. Functionally, it and Ghost are pretty much the same, including backup functionality as well as cloning, but I’ve only used Acronis myself so I’m not sure what the smaller, more subtle differences are.
Or are you looking for something cheaper or free? (A Linux rescue disk, ‘dd’, and ‘gparted’ would be free, but not-so-user-friendly…)
AFAIK, the trial versions of True Image and Migrate Easy are fully functional (though time-limited) and either will do what you need to do.
I can second the recommendation of Acronis.
However…
The trial of True Image wouldn’t clone my USB-connected drive. That function is limited to the paid version.
Thanks guys, I’ll give it a shot once I order a new drive.
Edit: Western Digital, if you are wondering. They made the old 60 gig that has worked really well over the years, so I figure I’ll stick with them.
UPDATE: Easy Migrate did copy the data. Too bad right after using it to ghost I got Can Not Find NTLDR errors on the old and new drives. I had to reinstall Windows to make the damn thing work. :-(
Of course you will get NTLDR errors since boot.ini counts EIDE and SATA driver/controllers differently.
Clonezilla. Free and (mostly) easy to use.
The boot.ini counts EIDE and SATA controllers and the devices on each controller as a different number so if you cloned it, the numbers stayed the same but your boot drive has changed positions in list of booting drives.
Speaking of boot.ini, the ntldr still wont work unless the XP CD is in the tray at startup. I removed the EIDE drive. The SATA drive is partitioned into 2 halves. This is what my boot.ini file looks like
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin /usepmtimer
Arise thread!
My solid state has been showing signs of dying for a while now, but I’m at the point where I think it might be eminent. I just grabbed a new drive and am ready to do the transfer. From what I read online it is as simple as hooking up the new drive and using a program called EaseUS to do the cloning. Is it that easy? Has anyone used this program before? I’m always skeptical of free programs.
Edit: Imminent* I’m leaving the typo there because it was a horrible one that requires ridicule.
I don’t recall fully, but my SSD came with a USB > SATA cable, and a program that was super easy to use. I don’t recall having any difficulty at all.
Mine is just a hard drive in a box. No sata even.
Well I did it with that program and it was actually stupid easy, except now the disk 0 drive is my old empty drive and my disk 1 drive is the new one and disk C. I hope that doesn’t screw with things somehow.
You did the right thing. If a drive is doing ANYTHING even SLIGHTLY weird, it is time to replace it with extreme alacrity.
With USB 3.0 SATA external adapters for cheap these days, it’s pretty easy to do the cloning externally, too, which is much easier than opening the case.
I had trouble reading a file off my drive & decided to check the drives health. Strangely it doesn’t give any SMART feedback to any software. Though using HDTune I managed to scan it for bad sectors and it flagged one.
Guess its best to buy a new drive now? (To be fair this one is is 5 years old)
Even the slightest whiff of hard drive weirdness, replace IMMEDIATELY.
Hehe… figured!
Thanks for the input.
So my son, bless him, was experiencing some issues with his laptop - notably disk usage rates skyrocketing. After resolving some stuff with SFC /scannow and a disabling some services he didn’t need, I had him run chkdsk /r to make sure there wasn’t a lingering issue with the hard drive.
The good news? Zero bad sectors!!! Woohoo!!!
The outlandishly bizarre? 197101408 repaired clusters, freeing up about 200 GB.
It’s now running as fast as ever, but wth caused that?!? I’m likewise thinking of swapping out the drive, although I’m not sure how friendly MS would be the change. I’m also worried if it’s from another issue that swapping the drive wouldn’t fix.
Any thoughts?
IIRC the “lost clusters” are logical issues.
Modern drives you don’t ever see bad sectors, they have been automagically mapping them away. There is a proprietary amount of reserve space for that. (You’d think you can figure it out by counting platters thought)
Windows should not care about activation from just a hard drive, done it plenty of times. It failed me once, but moved the drive to a brand new PC.
As for worrying it won’t fix it, no big deal. If it doesn’t work windows is so fubarred you wanted to reinstall it anyway.