HDD Cloning - any experience?

[TWINSET 1793]

Evening all

Just getting all the bits together to strip down an ATX tower and replace it with an ITX box

I've just remembered though, the tower has two HDD and the ITX only has space for one.

So, does anyone have experience with HDD cloning?

The OS is on a 160gb drive and there's around 500gb of media on the slave.

What I'm considering is a 2TB Seagate or WD drive and copying both drives onto that.

Is the cloning software as simple as the manufacturers make it sound, or are some better than others - would prefer free software, if it's up to the job

Any advice welcome

Drive options;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Barracuda-inch-Internal-Drive/dp/B006H32Q3S/ref=sr_1_1?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1371319820&sr=1-1&keywords=HDD+2tb

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Green-Desktop-Drive/dp/B008YAHW6I/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1371319613&sr=8-5&keywords=HDD+2tb

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-AV-GP-Desktop-Drive/dp/B0042AG9V8/ref=sr_1_10?m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1371319937&sr=1-10&keywords=HDD+2tb

If there's any others at Amazon, post 'em up - has to be via Amazon as I've a few quid of credit to use up

[danb1974 93]

Acronis True Image has a 30-days trial

[MadInventor 3881]

Cloning experience aside, Does the ITX have room for a 2.5" SSD and a 3.5" HDD ? I moved to using an 120GB SSD for my OS and the performance increase is well worth the extra cash of the SSD. (SSDs are well cheap from Ebuyer and DABs now, I picked up my 120GB SSD for about £70 last year). Perhaps if you are short of space in the ITX case, what about an SSD and an 2TB external drive ? SSDs generate less heat and use less energy, so if you're using a small case and don't have a large wattage PSU it's win-win.)

I can't say I've had much experience of cloning software, but if you're running windows it might be worth doing a clean install if you can rather than cloning the drive you have, start with a clean registry, no old install files / temp files, etc. When I went over to the SSD I did a full rebuild rather than trying to clone the drive.

This is the SSD I'm using:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OCZ-AGT3-25SAT3-120G-Agility-120GB-SATA/dp/B004Z0S6SO/ref=sr_1_5?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1371327998&sr=1-5&keywords=SSD+120GB

and it's been brilliant, I'm getting 7.2 / 7.3 windows experience index on it

Currently £80 from Ebuyer.

If you're going to go down the 1 drive route, it will probably make the cloning easier if you partition the new HDD to have the primary partition to match the size of the OS HDD, and then use the rest of the space for a secondary partition.

[Sayer 717]

I used this when my boot HD started experiencing mechanical failure (since the factory restore was on a partition on the same physical drive) . It's pretty straightforward, and since I only had to copy a single drive, the trial version was fine.

I was cloning a 2 partition 500GB drive to 2 partitions of a 3 Partition Terabyte drive, and it went off without a hitch.

[TWINSET 1793]

There is room for two HDD, although I've no idea what the PSU can handle and there's only two power outlets - 1 Molex, 1 SATA

I don't want to use an external drive as the idea is to minimize junk in the office plus I've already got a backup external HDD for 'important' stuff

The computer's really only going to be for surfing and watching the odd vid, nothing taxing so the benefits of SSD may be hard to notice.

Cheers for the link Sayer - I'll have a play...

[beefmuffin 1155]

forget the software. this is what i use now and i've never looked back. easy as a toaster. just make sure the target drive is of equal or larger size.

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-SATA-Hard-Drive-Duplicator/dp/B003WV5DLA/

[TA-Mark 195]

If your change to ITX involves a new motherboard, then doing a windows setup is highly recommended on the primary drive. Most times, when you try to start up a Windows that was installed with a different motherboard, it will blue screen before you get to a login screen as it tries to load drivers for hardware that does not exist on the new motherboard.

Once you have the primary drive partioned (during windows setup), you can go into the disc management and partition off the rest of the drive and then simply copy the old slave drive's data onto the secondary partition.

Do a backup of the primary drive before you dismantle the old machine to save the contents on My Documents, My Favourites etc. And you can also backup any software that did not need to be installed to run (doesn't require registry entries to function). You can backup these items onto the slave drive if you've got room.

**EDIT: That PSU you pictured looks like it's a DC-DC unit. Like when you're running the PC in a car or from a 12V Pb battery.

[danb1974 93]

There is an easy way to avoid bsod when you change the motherboard. While still on the old motherboard, go to device manager and for each ide/sata controller chage driver, don't search, let me specify, select standard ide controller. Do not reboot, just shutdown after you are finished, move the hdd to the new motherboard and will almost surely boot. Just install all required drivers for the new motherboard and you're done.

If we're talking windows xp, set the ide controller mode in bios to sata/standard/native whatever it's called, but _not_ to ahci.

The long and complicated way involves a windows repair which will take you a day (all updates must be reapplied, there are chances windows update will not work until you manually reinstall update agent etc.)

[DCLXVI 3]

I can 100% agree that if you are replacing the motherboard, do a reinstall! I can't stress this enough, you will never get a good installation if you change the system to much for a installed Windows...

If you want cloning, just download "Ultimate Boot Disk", burn it to a CD and boot from it and select one of the cloning tools in the HDD menu...

Also, the benifits of SSD are quite large in the bigger picture, shorter boot times, load times, shorter wake from power save, quieter, cooler, less taxnig on PSU...

[TA-Mark 195]

I can 100% agree that if you are replacing the motherboard, do a reinstall! I can't stress this enough, you will never get a good installation if you change the system to much for a installed Windows...

There can also be licencing issues if too much of the hardware changes, like on systems where nearly everything is on the motherboard (video, sound, network etc). You may get windows to boot up without BSOD by doing the driver trick (and more drivers than just the ide drivers, but all related to the mobo and the hardware being changed), but you WILL run into licencing issues when it sees the hardware changes and it will try to re-activate with Microsoft and fail.

This may also be the case when you do a clean install from the disc to a new system of a previously activated licence. A phone call to MS will get a new activation number, provided you tell them that the old system has been replaced and the old system no longer has the licence in use.

[TWINSET 1793]

**EDIT: That PSU you pictured looks like it's a DC-DC unit. Like when you're running the PC in a car or from a 12V Pb battery.

Yup - it runs from a dirty great brick; http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121099937989?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

Thanks all for the advice, looks like it'll be a fresh install then

M/B has just arrived, just waiting on the power brick now...

Then lots of media copying to follow

[TWINSET 1793]

Right, 3.5 HDD too thick - it touches the capacitors on the PSU

Any recommendations/avoids on SSD?

How about laptop drives? worth considering?

Or SSHD?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Laptop-Solid-State-Hybrid/dp/B00BHRWHNI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371769398&sr=8-2&keywords=sshd

For SSD, I can just about stretch to 256gb

Amazon SSD 256gb

For comparison purposes, the HDD in the current machine is this one;

http://reviews.cnet.com/internal-hard-drives/wd-caviar-blue-160gb/4507-9998_7-32002218.html

[beefmuffin 1155]

Corsair SSDs have been great for me. Good size/performance for money. Best place to find reviews is http://www.anandtech.com/tag/ssd

[danb1974 93]

I'm really impressed with the samsung 830 and 840 series (256GB version), fast, good price per GB

[TWINSET 1793]

Went for a SSHD in the end as couldn't justify the lack of space/cost of an SSD and there's no room in the case for a 3.5" drive with the motherboard I have (PSU is directly under the 3.5" bay and PSU touches HDD )

Then I got bored and decided to hide the PC

Bought a remote button from eBay and made a suspended shelf from a bit of pine shelving and some 40mm webbing

Switch wire is passed thru a vent at the back of the case and connected to mobo with 2x1 headers as normal (Farnell parts 1593506 and 1593529 if anyone needs 'em)

CD drive slot is still accesible, but don't use it that much so no biggie having it tucked away

Remote switch

Hidden PC

Webbing cable management