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Is this even possible? (precise copies of hard drives)
Synthesis
Honda Today!Registered User regular
Honda Today!Registered User regular
I apologize in advance for the amateurish nature of this post.
My father's hard drive on his primary desktop is failing--accompanied by the dreaded click-click of death. I swear, he must be kicking the thing constantly to go through drives this fast. Apparently, it's been a problem for a few weeks, but he waited to tell me until I could lured home for my annual Christmas visit.
Anyway, we've dealt with problem time and time in the past, but something occurred to me--for someone who hates to be inconvenienced, and given that SATA drives are seemingly cheap as dirt, would it be possible to make an exact copy of the HDD--drivers, registry, program files, media, etc.--onto another larger hard drive, and switch them out?
He's running Vista Home Premium, 32-bit, so he has the usual Vista Backup Utilities, for what they're worth. I wouldn't mind spending some money to buy him additional back-up software as necessary. Basically, what I'm asking is: could we install a larger hard disc, make an exact functional copy, switch the boot order, seal the old one away in a box to starve out the demons or whatever, and pretend all of this never happened? Or is this just the dream of a tech newbie? And how would you get around the problem of the root drive name (C:, obviously) .
Any guidance on this would be much appreciated.
My father's hard drive on his primary desktop is failing--accompanied by the dreaded click-click of death. I swear, he must be kicking the thing constantly to go through drives this fast. Apparently, it's been a problem for a few weeks, but he waited to tell me until I could lured home for my annual Christmas visit.
Anyway, we've dealt with problem time and time in the past, but something occurred to me--for someone who hates to be inconvenienced, and given that SATA drives are seemingly cheap as dirt, would it be possible to make an exact copy of the HDD--drivers, registry, program files, media, etc.--onto another larger hard drive, and switch them out?
He's running Vista Home Premium, 32-bit, so he has the usual Vista Backup Utilities, for what they're worth. I wouldn't mind spending some money to buy him additional back-up software as necessary. Basically, what I'm asking is: could we install a larger hard disc, make an exact functional copy, switch the boot order, seal the old one away in a box to starve out the demons or whatever, and pretend all of this never happened? Or is this just the dream of a tech newbie? And how would you get around the problem of the root drive name (C:, obviously) .
Any guidance on this would be much appreciated.
Synthesis on
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Acronis True Image is a must. It has an extremely high level of polish that most other pieces of software really can't beat.
Yup.
Every time I buy a new primary HDD I use Acronis True Image to copy my existing drive to it, and so forth. I highly recommend it.
Media / Social Monkey
GregRedHastings.com
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Seems like there's a consensus here (what I was looking for). I think you can get Arconis True Image as part of their Disk Director Suite (not a problem).
My father's clicking hard drive thanks you (?), and I have to admit, I'm a little interested in doing it too. I have a 650 GB WD SATA I got as a gift that I've been debating what to do with--it'd be nice to not have to stare at the diminishing number of hard drive space left on my own root drive. If it's as easy as copying the entire drive, sliding it in where the old one is--well, that's too good to pass up.
On a side note--is Western Digital the way to go? I generally have good luck with them (a comparatively bad luck with Samsung, though I really like their other products like TVs, etc.). Anyone got a brand they swear by?
I swear by Seagate. I would offer them my first newborn if I could :-P
A lot of people swear by the Barracuda...them and WD seem to be the big names. I guess I'll just go with what I have, or give that to my dad and see if a good deal comes by for Seagate or WD.
Media / Social Monkey
GregRedHastings.com
Now available for iOS - Coming Soon for Android / Ouya
I'm going to test it out myself before getting it to my dad. Looks like I'm going for 'Back Up "My Computer"'....
As for HDD, I like Samsung for a lot of stuff (had one of their MP3 players before my Zune) but both of the ATA drives I purchased from them had bad sectors. I don't really hold it against Samsung, since I was able to get off my data--it was just a pretty big inconvenience.
Also Seagate drives seem to be rock solid for me so I'm seagate all the way.
How does it handle drive letters? I'm actually thinking that I'll end up with a PC that has D (or E or F) as its root drive. Not really a problem, but that's what I'd assume would happen.
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Ah, okay....I remember having a fresh installation of Windows on a new hard drive while there was already another drive known as C, so D became the root. Clears that up.
Would it be possible to wipe the old drive within Windows to clear it up for further use, or would it bring up conflict issues?
My trusty ol' Seagate is making a click from time to time (not constantly...) and I was wondering if I could do this (copy contents of old drive to new drive, remove old drive, reboot, done), lucky this thread came, because I'd just be wandering around Google looking up information for months
Yes. Acronis has all those options and asks you what you want to do with your old drive. It will then finish up creating the new drive and help you setup your old drive for more use.
The active Windows installation will determine drive letters. Assuming the drive you boot from is the primary, Windows will label it C: and any others will be
So as long as your new drive is in the primary slot (for IDE anyway, SATA is a bit different) it will always be C: to the Windows installation on it.
With SATA it is different, at least with Vista. For a while I had XP on my main drive and Vista on a secondary. In XP the drive letters were C: and G: (not sure why G:) and in Vista they were C: and
And yes you can format other drives from within windows.
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In all my circumstances, I'm working with Vista, so I may very well either 1) make sure the new boot drive is in the top slot where the old one was or 2) boot with only the new boot drive, and then put the other two in later.
I thought I was running WD, since I had an additional one sitting about (I usually buy a few at a time, out of paranoia). For the sake of convenience, I was thinking of giving the WD to my dad and buying a new Seagate, though I'm still debating about the size (I think 1.5TB is going a little bit too far). Some people have claimed that Seagate's quality has been dwindling, and that larger drives seem to be more prone to failure (the later I find more convincing). I've heard their 1.5TB drives a nightmare, which I guess is just as well, since I don't need nearly that much space...probably between 600 to 800 tops.
Any recommendations? I'm just interested in the usual 32mb, 7200 RPM SATA stock, nothing over-the-top or high performance. In particular, what's the best, most reliable Barracuda out there?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284
I didn't realise they had updated the WE rating past 5.9.
Yup. Ignoring my own experience, NewEgg seems to be filled with a decent number of horror stories for larger Barracudas (though smaller ones like mine have nothing but praise). I guess WD is the way to go....thinking of picking up a 1TB, 32mb cache, as earlier suggested.