Use Macrium Reflect (free) or other to clone a Win7 hard disk

loninappleton said:

Just now I am running Seatools tests on a 1tb Seagate after the old Noron Ghost program failed twice to
complete and issuing an error which aborted the program.

Crystal Disk info reports the HD in the 'blue as good with no errors or warnings.

Seatools short test says Smart atributes have not triggered.

The drive is just two years old and the company told me warranty expired just in March 2018.

I am running the whole suite of Seatools Dos version including fix all on the advice
of Seagate staff which has been very helpful.

Is there perhaps an alternative with Macrium or Acronis? I've stuck with Norton Ghost
because frankly it's easier and less complicated: Select a source drive, select a target drive-- Go.
I've tried Acronis and Macrium in the past. Also unrelated I've had disastrous results with Linux based
cloners.
What's the latest and the simplest to do this task?

I must ask, "what version of Ghost were you using?". When the originating company that wrote Ghost, in New Zealand, back around 1996, sold Ghost to Symantec Corp, it began to degrade. When Ghost was re-written to run from within Windows, it really went to H311 in a handbasket.



I am fortunate to already have the last version of Ghost that was written in and for DOS. That is Ghost 11.5. I run it from bootable media, CD, Flash Drive, SD Memory card, etc. The only time I've had Ghost error out, is when there are Errors on the original HD. I ran SFC /scannow to fix the drive and then when I ran Ghost again, the backup (or clone) went off without a hitch. That was NOT the fault of Ghost, but in my C: drive.


I have a short list of Rules, for doing backups or Clones.
1. The Backup & Restore program must be on some bootable media, so it can backup the active OS drive or even a Data Only disk. And it can be used on multiple computers.

2. The backup copy must not be saved to the C: drive.
3. The drive to hold the backup or clone, should not be permanently attached to the system board, but should be separate from the system, in case of PSU failure or lightning strike.


Symantec no longer supports Ghost 11.5, but it's still 'out there', as an ISO, for those who want it.


Good Luck