Windows 7: Laptop: Transfer To A Second HD

I'm using a laptop with Windows 7 for music performances. I'd like to be able to swap the
hard drive with an identical one for a fast switch in case of a crash. What's the best way to make (transfer everything to) the second hard drive? I'm figuring that this would be the next best thing to having 2 identical laptops. Thanks.

Symantec Ghost: Amazon.com: Symantec Norton Ghost 15.0 (1 PC): Software
Macrium Reflect: Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

Both are good there are many others including what is built into Windows 7.

Thanks for the quick response. Can you be more spacific? I'm figuring I'll need some sort of adapter wire to connect from USB to the SATA drive. And what specific program built into Windows 7 should I use?

Very sorry, I thought you were just looking for the software. Yes you will need the software and an adapter to hook your second drive to your laptop via USB port so you can clone the drives.

I own the following and it works great.
Here is a good adapter for that: Amazon.com: Sabrent USB-DSC5 Serial ATA or IDE 2.5-/3.5-Inch to USB 2.0 Cable Converter Adapter…

If you want to use Windows own software, you would use the imaging capability found at control panels/backup and restore/create a system image.

You could use the hardware mentioned by Windows Star, or you could buy a "hard drive dock" such as these:


Newegg.com - hard drive dock

You connect the dock to your USB port and then stick your new drive into it.

You can't directly boot from a system image--you have to restore the image to a partition other than the one on which it sits.

I would make a fairly small (40 gigs?) partition on the new drive and then make an image of your original drive and store it on this new partition. Then restore from that image to another partition on the new drive. You could then delete the 40 gig partition if you wanted to.


Of course, I would test the new drive just to be sure the imaging worked.

Or you could try the "cloning" capability of your imaging program--not to be confused with imaging. Windows doesn't have a clone program, but Acronis will do it.

I use the Rosewill RX-DU 100 shown on the linked list.