Disk Cloning software

[comda]

Greetings CH,

Long story short, I have a HTPC that's running windows 10 that I wish to swap the drive out. It has a WD black thats pretty much new and I want to use that in another system, and swap the drive with one that has far more hours on it that I wouldn't trust with my main PC.

I'm not in the mood to reinstall drivers, and applications so I'd like to clone one drive to the other. Now, I've used Macrium reflect for years and when I worked in a computer store we had a drive duplicator and Norton Ghost.

However, what are some free alternatives you would suggest that would allow me to connect the replacement drive to the PC, and duplicate one drive to another so I can simply disconnect the other drive after completion boot into the replacement Hitatchi drive and nothings changed.

One suggestion I See is AOMEI and I've never used it. Thoughts on its job? Also I see Acronis has a free option. Any other suggestions?

As always, appreciate any feedback.

[patio]

Easus.
Aeomi is garbage...

Note: the source drive has to be equal or larger than the main HDD for sucess

[comda]

Appreciate the quick reply Patio,

Both drives are 1tb in size, but I'll have to check exact parameters. Am I able to somehow shrink the partition and then simply expand on the new drive?

[patio]

I would seriously advise against that...if the source drive is close to capacity then do some housekeeping...

BTW the Easus app is called ToDo..;.still Free i believe.
Keep us posted...

[Salmon Trout]

Why not use Macrium Reflect? You are used to it, and the free edition clones disks. I have been using it for that, and for image backups, for years. This screen clip is of my system. Click image to enlarge.

With Macrium Reflect you can boot the target disk on the same system after cloning. 

https://blog.macrium.com/techie-tuesday-cloning-a-disk-764bed0ad6e1

[patio]

Agreed... i only suggested an alternative cause he asked...

[Salmon Trout]

I've tried Easeus, Clonezilla, Acronis, and Paragon, and while they all do the job, I seem to have stuck with Macrium, I think it's because the interface is well designed. or maybe I just like blue-and-white. A disk cloner is a disk cloner. Period.

[comda]

Why not use Macrium Reflect? You are used to it, and the free edition clones disks. I have been using it for that, and for image backups, for years. This screen clip is of my system. Click image to enlarge.

https://blog.macrium.com/techie-tuesday-cloning-a-disk-764bed0ad6e1

I could give macrium a shot. I've honestly not used it in years, since my PC last ran XP when I'd log into the linux disk to restore a drive.. In order to do this, I'd have to use a third PC, so the main drive thats being mirrored isn't in operation?

[patio]

No...you have the source HDD in place...you connect the destination HDD as slave...and you run Macrium from a bootable media...
No 3rd PC or 2nd PC required...

[Salmon Trout]

In order to do this, I'd have to use a third PC, so the main drive thats being mirrored isn't in operation?

Not sure what you mean. If you want to clone a drive, both drives have to be connected to the same computer, either by SATA/IDE or you could put the target in a USB enclosure to do the clone.  You can clone or image the running system disk while the system is up, with the Macrium app minimized. I image my system every Saturday and I just do whatever I want while it is happening. Surf the web, whatever. That Macrium techie-tuesday article I linked to above discusses these things. Another thing you can do which is handy, is, if you have made an image file (rather than a clone) on an external, or secondary, or NAS drive, you can mount that image as a virtual drive with its own drive letter and view or copy stuff from it, and, of course, you can restore an image back to a disk. If you have dual boot Linux and Windows disk it will clone or image everything, both systems and the Grub boot stuff.

[Salmon Trout]

...and you run Macrium from a bootable media...

You can do this, but since you have to have Macrium installed to make the bootable media, you might as well do the clone in Windows while it is running.

[patio]

I stopped doin it this way as the 1st 2 clones i ran out of windows way back when both failed...

Thats why i suggested the bootable media..

[Salmon Trout]

I stopped doin it this way as the 1st 2 clones i ran out of windows way back when both failed...

Well, I agree that if you try a clone from Windows and it fails, then the bootable media is another way to do it. I have been making backup images every Saturday morning for about 10 years, plus at other times, like before an important update, and I have never had one fail yet. When I have bought SSDs for systems I have used Macrium to clone the system HDD to the new SSD and it worked then also.

[Salmon Trout]

I just remembered - the last Samsung SSD I bought came with Samsung's Disk Migration software to clone a hard drive to SSD, and that was for running in Windows, to clone the same drive that Windows was on.

[BC_Programmer]

I have had good luck replacing a drive by merely connecting the new drive, using Reflect to clone the original drive to the new drive, then swapping the original drive out for the replacement. Has worked for both system drives as well as data drive replacements.

[DaveLembke]

I too have used Macrium Reflect for cloning, however when pushing a cloned image to a larger drive you may need to resize the partition on the destination drive or you can keep it the same partition size and make another partition in the unused space if you like.

I think the most interesting clone I did once was that I wanted to push my HDD to a new SSD but the SSD was smaller than the HDD. I ended up backing up my data off of the HDD to an external drive and got the data down to 70GB with installed content+windows 7. I then resized my partition on the 250GB HDD to 120GB and then cloned the undersized 120GB partition from the 250GB HDD to the 120GB SSD. This worked perfect and the system then was running on the 120GB SSD with around 45GB free.

[Salmon Trout]

I daresay you can do this with other tools, but with Macrium, when cloning, you can adjust the destination partition size. First, of course, you make sure that the source partition has less data on it than the target partition size.  The Samsung app I got with an SSD did all that me automatically.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clone-your-pcs-hard-drive-macrium-reflect#small

[patio]

The most important thing that hasn't been mentioned is verifying the image after creating...
Nothin suxx more than an hour and a half restoring a bad image...

[Geek-9pm]

Disk Clone is a popular topic.
Here are some CH links:

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/d/disk-clone.htm

https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001914.htm

a few year sago Norton Ghost was the choice:
https://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=34032.0

Macrium  Reflect is not free, buyout can get permission to use a copy free.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

The list below is not complete, but it provides a starting point for more investigation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software
Note there are versions for Apple,  Linux an d Windows.

[Salmon Trout]

Macrium  Reflect is not free, buyout can get permission to use a copy free.

Macrium Reflect has a free edition, which you can download, without asking anyone's "permission".

[Salmon Trout]

The most important thing that hasn't been mentioned is verifying the image after creating...
Nothin suxx more than an hour and a half restoring a bad image...

Yes. Well said! Macrium option:



After backup, check log:



I was backing up a 120 GB SSD with about 80 GB of data (ignoring swap and hibernate files), onto a 4 TB USB3 external drive. Macrium image compression set to 'medium' (default). An unverified backup takes about 10 minutes, and the verification adds about 6 minutes to that.

This is the part of a backup process that many people forget about, often to their cost when disaster strikes. A successful recovery from trouble needs these things to be true:

1. You made a backup.
2. The backup completed.
3. The backup is a valid one.
4. The backup didn't get lost or damaged.
5. You have the means to restore an image or copy.
6. You know how to do a restore.

You can manage (1) quite simply. Have a schedule, do the backups. Ensure (2) is satisfied by observing the backup process and any alerts it creates, and looking for a backup file of appropriate date, time and size. You can achieve (3) by setting any 'verify' options the backup app provides and watching for the success message or log entry. I deal with (4) by using 3 different locations for backup images - a NAS, a USB 3 external drive, a SATA internal drive, and rotating the location each time. If one or even two backup drive(s) go down, I've got a good backup to use. I manage (5) by having a bootable medium (actually 2, a bootable USB pen drive and a bootable CD, and I've tested both). Without (6), even if you do the preceding things, you are, effectively stuffed, so it is important to take the time to actually do a restore, even if you don't really need to.

I have read disaster stories where mainframes, minis, or servers fail, and the admins say "no worries! we've done rotating backups onto tape cartridges!" and found, when attempting a restore, that the tape machine has been borked for months and they have a whole bunch of religiously rotated blank tapes.

I should add that I have successfully made an image backup of a drive, and then restored that image to a different drive. I installed an SSD that way to a laptop.

[comda]

No...you have the source HDD in place...you connect the destination HDD as slave...and you run Macrium from a bootable media...
No 3rd PC or 2nd PC required...

Sorry for the long absence. The PC is at my parents so I plan to do it this weekend. Just to clear things up. I will call this the HTPC. Both source and target drives are 1TB in size, but different manufacturers. So just to be sure, I want to shrink the size of the Source, plug the target into the HTPC, and just copy it while it's operating. Worse case scenario I have to reinstall windows.

[patio]

If they are identical in size no need to shrink the source...
That can create more issues than you need...
After the clone is succesful you can then use Easus Partition Manager to create partitions if needed...

[comda]

I only worry about size because the drives are not the same manufacturer. We'll see tomorrow when I look at it.

[Geek-9pm]

For what it is worth. 
Disk Clone work is not rocket science. 
There are lots of tutorials on the Internet.
Here are a few worth a mention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__9k1M_2FKo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F2nh35jq58

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5mqUVzHoLw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn6ALccip1Y

https://www.easeus.com/backup-utility/copy-and-clone-hard-drive.html
This one has text, video and screenshots.

My recommendation is simple. Practice on something that does not matter.
And make a conventional backup image before you clone. 

[comda]

Sorry everyone!

Tried to reply to this thread over the weekend, and it had vanished. No idea why or what happened. Still dont fully understand the notification system in this forum because I used to get email notifications when someone replied.

ANYWAYS.

It was a success. Had to ensure the Target drive had no partition and I simply dragged all the partitions and it cloned successfully without a hitch. Was super fast too!

So just wanted to say thank you to all who helped bring me back to seeing how great Macrium is.

[resort_2_walk]

Good of you to report back Comda.

I've always remained loyal to Acronis but it seems I might have to give Macrium a shot when I next need to clone

[patio]

Great news Comda...Congrats ! !

[comda]

Great news Comda...Congrats ! !

I hear Acronis is better for older versions of windows. I'll try it out cause I think I have to duplicate a windows 95 drive while I still can LOL.

[patio]

Easus will do fine...Acronis ain't Free...

[Geek-9pm]

For what it is worth....
There is an Open Source Linux Clone maker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_in_Time_(Linux_software)

Back In Time is a backup application for Linux. It has versions that integrate favorably in GNOME and KDE SC 4 and is available directly from the repositories of many Linux distributions. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL), it is free software.

Back In Time is available in Ubuntu’s Software Center.