Cloning a hdd

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alia176

alia176

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dudes,

My 80g laptop hdd is just about maxed out. I have less than 1G left but I do have a 320G sitting on my desk gathering dust for about three years. I know that lots of products exist out there but can someone suggest a good way to clone my hdd? I do have a 300G external USB hdd (WD Passport) that I can use for this process as a temp file holder if needed.

Oh yeah, free software would be good :D Let me know your experience.

Thanks.
 
A few years ago I used norton ghost, but I don't know what is good these days. Curious what others suggest as I am looking for something also.
 
I've used Seagate's DiscWizard which is a free download from their website to upgrade my laptop drive a few times (different laptops over their product life).

It 'generally' requires a seagate drive, but you use to be able to (maybe still) do an alt t o (search diskwizard override) to bypass the error message.

cheers,
george.
 
Hmm, my new drive happens to be a Seagate so maybe this will be easy? Yeah, I doubt it.....

Will XP 32 bit have a hard time with a 320g hdd?
 
alia176 said:
Hmm, my new drive happens to be a Seagate so maybe this will be easy? Yeah, I doubt it.....

Will XP 32 bit have a hard time with a 320g hdd?
Click to expand...

Well, then the Seagate software is DEFINITELY the one to use being free. It is really easy to do the migration using their software - you aren't 'that' incompetent :)

XP 32 bit SP3 using NTFS will have no issues with the 320g drive, it can supposedly handle 2tb.

cheers,
george.
 
what is the driver to clone the HDD? Unless you are trying to save "installed software" its a good idea to just install a new hard drive clean, load the OS clean, and then load the various software pgks you use or want clean. Of course prior to that you backup your files/pics/....etc and then transfer over to new hard drive once your os and software pkgs are installed.

You should stop where you are anyway and make sure you have the backup disks from the mfg of the laptop in question, which should contain the OS, and any software initally installed on the system, even if you are not the orginal owner of the laptop you can often get the "backup disk" by paying a minimal fee from the mainline vendors. It seems to be very common that you no longer are provided these disks at point of sale.
 
The driving force for cloning versus a clean install is that over a few years you end up installing a LOT of utilities and not all will you remember you installed until you find you're on a trip somewhere and it is missing....

A fresh install may be nice for cleanliness, but can involve many hours/days of installing and setting up all the stuff you had already loaded. I've upgraded HDD on several laptops and there is no way I would consider a fresh install considering how many programs/utilities are on my machine. Then factor in that you now do a clean install of all your software (especially license locked software) and what you have a older revs so now you spend more hours downloading patches and service packs. Then missing drivers....

Now, if all you have is a laptop that has a browser and email program and a word processor, then a clean install could be very quick - that is NOT my situation or many other folk's either.

Just the thought of upgrading my laptop to a new model and how long it would take to get it 'just right' again, keeps me from purchasing. There has to be several generations of laptop improvements before I can justify the work involved. Case in point, I've replaced the mousepad on my laptop and repaired (bought online) the odd key that I've destroyed in mishaps...

Of course by cloning I mean installing a larger HDD and using a program that moves ALL the data from the original HDD to the new LARGER capacity HDD.

cheers,
george.
 
Elbert said:
what is the driver to clone the HDD? Unless you are trying to save "installed software" its a good idea to just install a new hard drive clean, load the OS clean, and then load the various software pgks you use or want clean. Of course prior to that you backup your files/pics/....etc and then transfer over to new hard drive once your os and software pkgs are installed.

You should stop where you are anyway and make sure you have the backup disks from the mfg of the laptop in question, which should contain the OS, and any software initally installed on the system, even if you are not the orginal owner of the laptop you can often get the "backup disk" by paying a minimal fee from the mainline vendors. It seems to be very common that you no longer are provided these disks at point of sale.
Click to expand...

The "driving" force to clone is to keep $##k worth of proprietary enterprise software in this laptop for which I don't have the licenses (left the company)! I also need to have a backup image of this hdd just in case. But, you bring up good points.
 
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george_tlc said:
The driving force for cloning versus a clean install is that over a few years you end up installing a LOT of utilities and not all will you remember you installed until you find you're on a trip somewhere and it is missing....

A fresh install may be nice for cleanliness, but can involve many hours/days of installing and setting up all the stuff you had already loaded. I've upgraded HDD on several laptops and there is no way I would consider a fresh install considering how many programs/utilities are on my machine. Then factor in that you now do a clean install of all your software (especially license locked software) and what you have a older revs so now you spend more hours downloading patches and service packs. Then missing drivers....

Now, if all you have is a laptop that has a browser and email program and a word processor, then a clean install could be very quick - that is NOT my situation or many other folk's either.

Just the thought of upgrading my laptop to a new model and how long it would take to get it 'just right' again, keeps me from purchasing. There has to be several generations of laptop improvements before I can justify the work involved. Case in point, I've replaced the mousepad on my laptop and repaired (bought online) the odd key that I've destroyed in mishaps...

Of course by cloning I mean installing a larger HDD and using a program that moves ALL the data from the original HDD to the new LARGER capacity HDD.

cheers,
george.
Click to expand...

George,

Got a question for you. My XP pro is still on SP2.0. Should I bump it up to SP3 and then perform the cloning procedure? I can't recall exactly, but I think one of the installed software didn't play nicely with SP3 but that was back in '07, I think.
 
alia176 said:
George,

Got a question for you. My XP pro is still on SP2.0. Should I bump it up to SP3 and then perform the cloning procedure? I can't recall exactly, but I think one of the installed software didn't play nicely with SP3 but that was back in '07, I think.
Click to expand...

Well, you could do the clone with sp2 as is. Then on the new hdd test your installed software. Then upgrade to sp3 and test again. Worst, you've wasted some time cloning to a new hdd without 'messing' up your original and working sp2 install and you can re-clone and leave as sp2 if it doesn't like sp3.

I tend to veer on the conservative side...

cheers,
george.
 
Excellent idea, thanks. I'll do as you suggested.
 
xp is a very very insecure operating system. I was at a Technoligy users group recently where the guest speaker, was able to hack into a secure xp box and take it over. Have you considered upgrading to windows 7? the os is more secure.

As for the licences, well, you dont own it. Do you really need the software for work? What type of work do you do? Lots of free open source applications to use. Heck, I downloaded windows 2008 server r2 to get my skills up on Active directory.

Mirroring is a huge time saver but, it is mostly for production replication reasons.
 
george_tlc said:
The driving force for cloning versus a clean install is that over a few years you end up installing a LOT of utilities and not all will you remember you installed until you find you're on a trip somewhere and it is missing....

A fresh install may be nice for cleanliness, but can involve many hours/days of installing and setting up all the stuff you had already loaded. I've upgraded HDD on several laptops and there is no way I would consider a fresh install considering how many programs/utilities are on my machine. Then factor in that you now do a clean install of all your software (especially license locked software) and what you have a older revs so now you spend more hours downloading patches and service packs. Then missing drivers....

Now, if all you have is a laptop that has a browser and email program and a word processor, then a clean install could be very quick - that is NOT my situation or many other folk's either.

Just the thought of upgrading my laptop to a new model and how long it would take to get it 'just right' again, keeps me from purchasing. There has to be several generations of laptop improvements before I can justify the work involved. Case in point, I've replaced the mousepad on my laptop and repaired (bought online) the odd key that I've destroyed in mishaps...

Of course by cloning I mean installing a larger HDD and using a program that moves ALL the data from the original HDD to the new LARGER capacity HDD.

cheers,
george.
Click to expand...


maybe you missed my point at the very start...."saving installed software"..

A clean install functions better... Its obvious what the clone function attempts to do...its not obvious why people tend to think its a magic solution.

going clean its an expression to note that the hard drive is clean and then you install the various pkgs you need ...like the OS and whatever else. the system will function better with a clean install
 
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if the current clone software pkgs will migrate your contents of the old hard drive to the new larger hard drive without loss of any information...etc then happy trails as long as the OS has no issues with the change.

I would suggest you back up your data prior.

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/discwizard/
 
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Elbert said:
if the current clone software pkgs will migrate your contents of the old hard drive to the new larger hard drive without loss of any information...etc then happy trails as long as the OS has no issues with the change.

I would suggest you back up your data prior.

DiscWizard | Seagate
Click to expand...

That is THE program I recommended early on in this thread. It DOES work and will allow migration of ALL programs/data etc etc from a smaller drive to a larger driver. You STILL have the original drive so it IS you backup. Your new/bigger drive is what you will then install into your laptop. I have used diskwizard a few times and it does the job perfectly.

Can you clarify why "You won't have space to upgrade... " on the new drive?

cheers,
george.
 
george_tlc said:
Can you clarify why "You won't have space to upgrade... " on the new drive?

cheers,
george.
Click to expand...

not my comment... regarding the space to upgrade...but I'll assume that the clonning software takes a lot space on the new hard drive initially with copying data? Or maybe there are some systems checks or it compares data before it concludes..?
 
Elbert said:
not my comment... regarding the space to upgrade...but I'll assume that the clonning software takes a lot space on the new hard drive initially with copying data? Or maybe there are some systems checks or it compares data before it concludes..?
Click to expand...

No, the cloning software takes little room and Alia is upgrading from 80g to 320g, so he'll have more than enough room for the sp3 update AFTER he's finished the clone operation and re-installed the 320g as the laptop drive.

My take on this whole thread is (directed to no one in particular) :

a) Alia has a bunch of software installed that he wants to migrate from an 80g to 320g drive
b) He has a seagate drive, so using diskwizard is a perfect solution
c) He can migrate EVERYTHING from his 80g to 320g and the 80g is now a 'backup of all his data'.
d) He can now install the 320g drive into his laptop
e) He can test and if he wants upgrade to sp3 and verify all the programs he has play well with sp3. If not he can repeat steps a-d again and NOT upgrade to sp3

The ethics of running his software since he's left the previous company is a different issue.

cheers,
george.
 
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