must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please!

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (fireberd)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:01:20 GMT

I use Acronis True Image as do all the other Computer Techies that I know.

I do part-time PC repair and support and recommend Acronis to all my clients.

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (evansmalley)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:30:26 GMT

Well, once it did repair, the only thing it 'repaired' was that Win 7 needed re-authorization. Then, it hit me why: That's part of their anti-piracy system: It's reading the drive serial number, and if it's different, it needs to re-authorize, to make sure you haven't cloned your Win 7 on a different machine. Once it re-authorized, then I had no further issues. I had not seen this before, but original XP supposedly had it. - And since you're taking the drive out, you might consider replacing your new drive in with the rubber-isolation screws. For me, this greatly reduced the disk drive noise.

I am SO impressed by our online community- I'm amazed by the high calibre and excellent competency of all your replies... did I mention that you all were... FREE!??? (bunch a ho's! ha!)

Yah know... just wanted to clone a drive onto a new one and replace it... hardware maintenance... that should be soooo easy in the future. It's a basic. Essential.

But after a lovely and ever-so-thoughtful caveat from Marianna at Avid (the greatest rep ever!!!!!!!!!!) regarding licensing- and then adding your thoughts, forkol (and forkol y'all, by the way, [that's just a joke]!), I'm totally in mortal dread of another Avid reinstall. Oh man, it's murder and pain, you know? Cakewalk IS a cakewalk. Love 'em. Never much grief for me. Great app, easy to use!!! But why must some companies make backing up and restoring your work so hard? I don't blame them, because of the piracy thing...

But the way Cakewalk manages it makes me want to buy their products, and avoid the other companies. Life is short and some times you just want a simpler thing, ya know?

if we make it- we can all look back and laugh. But I fear tomorrow, I'll be crying. (In the Court of the Crimson King you know... can't help it I'm a musician!)

K- really appreciate your thoughts, all of you- try just drilling a hole in the wall forkol and putting your tower in the other room in terms of drive noise- helped me lots!

I owe you all- thank you-
Ev

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (forkol)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:51:07 GMT

What everybody said is good advice so far. And Acronis will work, but sometimes for me, I've had issues, so I've used Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009, which is free sometimes, or you get it the 'PC Utilities' mags for free every now an then. Worked really well.

Here's some suggestions:

- You'll be fine if you are cloning, so long as you keep the original drive and don't touch it until you're certain your clone/backup worked.

- Consider using a USB-to-IDE converter or enclosure and clone your drive. This way, you don't have to open the case and move drives around until you're certain you've got it cloned correctly. Plus, you can use this and any old drive and backup in the future. However, it's best you have a high-speed USB port (which your old XP machine may not) or it will take a lot longer. Most backup/clone software works fine here.

- You're backing up XP, but I ran into an interesting issue with Win 7. I cloned a drive to a different manufacturer, and when I put that drive in, it was saying something was wrong with the hardware, and to do a repair. Well, once it did repair, the only thing it 'repaired' was that Win 7 needed re-authorization. Then, it hit me why: That's part of their anti-piracy system: It's reading the drive serial number, and if it's different, it needs to re-authorize, to make sure you haven't cloned your Win 7 on a different machine. Once it re-authorized, then I had no further issues. I had not seen this before, but original XP supposedly had it.

- And since you're taking the drive out, you might consider replacing your new drive in with the rubber-isolation screws. For me, this greatly reduced the disk drive noise.

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (garrigus)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:53:29 GMT

Acronis True Image... http://newtechreview.com/?Acronis

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series. Get Sonar 8 Power - Today! Go to: http://www.garrigus.com/ - http://www.musictechshop.com/ - http://www.cooltechshop.com/

Publisher of DigiFreq - free music technology newsletter. Win a free SoundTech Vocal Trainer Package, go to: http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/

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Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (Susan G)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:40:56 GMT

Hi Fred-

If you're upgrading to a WesternDigital drive they (WD) have a version of Acronis for free that will do the job

Good point! Seagate does, too, if you're using either Seagate or Maxtor drives.

-Susan

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (evansmalley)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:37:55 GMT

wow you all are awesome. Everyone seems to recommend Acronis, but last time I used it it totally jacked up my drive C just in the act of making a back-up, not even restoring!?

No one seems to think that putting a new unit in the drive D slot and cloning drive C to it, then changing jumpers and replacing the old drive with the cloned drive is the right thing to do... but that seems logical to me. Of course, I don't really know! "so I got that going for me"

maybe I should just write everything with sharpie on my left hand?

thanks everyone- nice to hear from you!-
Ev

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (Fred Holmes)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:29:34 GMT

Hi Ev,

Yup - I agree with Susan, Acronis is a great tool for backup/cloning.
If you're upgrading to a WesternDigital drive they (WD) have a version of Acronis for free that will do the job

Fred

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (hairyjamie)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:29:03 GMT

+1 to Acronis True Image Home 2010.

It does exactly as expected and I wish I'd used it before I had a Hard Drive fail recently!

Re:must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (Susan G)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:55:06 GMT

Hi Ev-

I've had to clone/replace a couple of drives in the past few weeks (my travails are documented in the "Computer" forum!" />), and I was generally very happy with Acronis True Image Home 2010's performance.

One caveat if you use it to clone a boot drive is you have to manually shut down and disconnect either the original or cloned drive before you restart, otherwise Windows will be "confused".

Another is that if you clone a problem drive the process will take *much* longer than the on-screen display predicts, but that's not a big surprise, and since it sounds like your drives are healthy you shouldn't have that problem.

Otherwise, Acronis works great, and is very fast, but that's assuming you don't have to physically remove a drive to clone it. Can you not have both the source and destination drives installed in your case at the same time?

-Susan

must replace hard drives- cloning advice? please! (evansmalley)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:43:25 GMT

hey all! My internal IDE hard drives are old and small and must be cloned and replaced! (they're both working) It's a massive, pretty dang old tower running XP pro sp2 which frankly works great.

My plan is: A. to take all the files from my "media files" drive D- which I have saved (all of 'em) onto an external "notebook" drive, and copy them to a new 500 gig western digital internal drive. (After removing the old one and placing the new one in it's place).

And B: While the old drive D is out, put another new 500 gig western digital internal hard drive in the old drive D slot, and clone my C "boot drive" to it, replacing the drive C "boot drive" with that eventually.

Do any of you have some advice, warnings, technique tips, etc for doing such things? I'm freaking scared to death a little! Any counsel you can provide would be VERY APPRECIATED!!!

Thanks-
Ev