Computer Hope

Microsoft => Microsoft Windows => Windows Vista and 7 => Topic started by: Agent7573 on September 03, 2012, 09:50:38 PM

Title: I cloned my old hard drive to my new one
Post by: Agent7573 on September 03, 2012, 09:50:38 PM

........but my pc is still booting under the old hard drive. How do I boot from the new drive?  What changes need to be made to my BIOS etc.?
I've read that I need to make the new hard drive the 1st hard drive in the BIOS boot order???  Not sure how to do this....can someone provide me steps(specifics)

My PC:Dell
OS: Windows 7

Title: Re: I cloned my old hard drive to my new one
Post by: hartbeatmr on September 03, 2012, 10:13:50 PM

Good evening Agent7573 and welcome to CH

Well I do not know what you used to clone the HD's and I do not know what style / interface your HD's are or what model the Dell PC is.

But if you have IDE hard drives make sure the jumpers are the same on both. Most common is master / slave / CS (cable select). If the HD are CS move the OLD HD to the second connecter from the end and move the new HD from the second to the first connecter on the cable.

On ALL IDE drives the master has to be the last connecter on the cable the slave HD is always second one in from the end of the cable to avoid all issues.

If the HD are sata just plug in your new cloned HD to the sata connecter where the OLD HD was on the MoBo usally sata port 0 or 1 for boot drives. Sata device's will only have 1 device per cable. Leave the OLD HD disconnected go into the BIOS and make sure it is seen and then just boot up as normal when all is good shut down the PC and plug in your OLD HD to the sata connecter on the MoBo the BIOS will take care of the rest.

Please let us know how you make out, Mike   

Title: Re: I cloned my old hard drive to my new one
Post by: Agent7573 on September 03, 2012, 10:45:02 PM

Good Evening and thanks for your reply; I cloned my HD's with Macrium Reflect-free edition; my Dell is a Optiplex GX280
The hard drives are SATA

Title: Re: I cloned my old hard drive to my new one
Post by: hartbeatmr on September 03, 2012, 10:59:06 PM

Good evening Agent7573 and welcome back to CH

Thank you for the info. I am all to familiar with the GX280.

If you are going to keep the old HD just switch the cables on the MoBo and then format your OLD HD if you are going to use it for data / back etc.

Hope this helps you, Mike

PS Kudos on doing this a lot of people would be gun shy on this.  ;D ;D   

Title: Re: I cloned my old hard drive to my new one
Post by: Paci on September 04, 2012, 01:18:59 AM

One question to the thread starter, did you clone the whole C: to another physical HD or just an image on the same HD?  And what programms have you used.

Title: Re: I cloned my old hard drive to my new one
Post by: hartbeatmr on September 04, 2012, 01:26:36 AM

Good morning Paci and welcome to CH

In the future if you have a suggestion / idea please contribute (just not in the AV / Malware section). But if you need to ask a question please do so by starting your own thread.

This way it is much easier to keep track of and will not be confusing to anyone on the forum.

Thank you and once again welcome to CH

Mike