Cloning HD

whs · 12 Feb 2014

When you make an image of a partition with Acronis or any other imaging program, you produce an exact replica of that partition from the time the image was made. If you restore that image to the SSD, you have an identical twin of what was on the originating disk.

If that partition was the C partition, you can now run your OS from the SSD.

IMPORTANT: If your originating disk had also the small 100MB System Partition, you need to transfer that too to the SSD. Else your system would not boot. Check that in Disk Management.

If you could post a picture of your Disk Management, we'll be glad to check that for you.

bonkers72 · 12 Feb 2014

Ok......here's a screen shot of my disk

whs · 12 Feb 2014

Yeah, as I suspected - you have the 100MB partition. You have to include that into the image and restore it on the SSD.

bonkers72 · 12 Feb 2014

Good thing you mentioned that about backing up the reserve also. Just looked at my back ups. Been only backing up C: partition ONLY not the reserve. Whew!

So........once I boot up from the CD, and place my image on the new disk, Windows will boot on it's own after that correct?

whs · 12 Feb 2014

Once you placed the images on your SSD and the Acronis recovery program from the recovery CD has ended, Acronis will peobebly boot back into your current system.

Then you have to shutdown, restart and go into the BIOS (usually F2) to set the SSD as second boot device - keep the CD/DVD reader as first boot device. Now it will boot from the SSD.

However, if your PC is a laptop with only 1 disk bay, you need not change the boot order in the BIOS.

bonkers72 · 13 Feb 2014

Ok.............I think I have enough info to make this happen. Thank you very much for the help. Won't be doing this for a few weeks yet. Wanted to PM you if it's ok when the time comes in case I run into any issues. Thanks again, Gary

whs · 13 Feb 2014

No problem Gary. You can PM me any time. But you can also post here. It will pop up by me after you posted - even after a year, LOL.

bonkers72 · 09 Aug 2014

Mr. WHS. First, congrats on the MPV status.

I know we left off last talking about cloning one HD to another. Have the new HD and ready to go. But, after thinking about this I just wonder if it's just better to just start from scratch. Load a new OS on the new hard drive and start fresh. Had this current HD for 10 yrs. What's your thoughts. Thanks for the input.

ignatzatsonic · 09 Aug 2014

That decision is mostly based on how much value you place on your time and your trouble-shooting skill level if the cloning or imaging has issues.

Imaging and cloning save time if successful, but are not quite as reliable as clean installs. If clean installs, program re-installation, and reconfiguring everything could be done in an hour or so, few people would bother with imaging or cloning.

The downside of cloning or imaging is the slight possibility of issues or outright failures. If it doesn't go your way, then you are faced with trouble-shooting--which might take 10 minutes or 100 hours without success. Maybe a 2 or 5 percent possibility. If you don't want to take that chance, do a clean install.

I'd lean toward clean install in your situation unless you are completely averse to re-installing apps and configuring and are willing to take the slight risk in order to probably save time. All the more so if you haven't done a clean install in several years.

whs · 10 Aug 2014

bonkers72 said:

Mr. WHS. First, congrats on the MPV status.

I know we left off last talking about cloning one HD to another. Have the new HD and ready to go. But, after thinking about this I just wonder if it's just better to just start from scratch. Load a new OS on the new hard drive and start fresh. Had this current HD for 10 yrs. What's your thoughts. Thanks for the input.

I agree. A new installation is the best option. After so many years your current system has certainly accumulated a lot of gremlins which you may not want to transfer to the new HD.

If nothing else, you will certainly get a better performance with a new installation. The only downside is that you have to go thru a lot of updates and have to reinstall the programs and settings.

Make sure you make an image of the current system to an external device. Use the free Macrium. Then you can always recover anything from the old system that you might have forgotten. For your user files I would make an additional backup.