That sounds like the safest way to go. I will pick up a matched pair of SSD drives. Same size as the one in my tower at the moment, (480gb). This size is dirt cheap at the moment and is only half full after about ten years. No point in getting anything larger.
Just one more question. After trying to digest the helpful posts above, and reading the guide on the Hasleo website, I still don't see any difference between the two operations. Cloning vs Migration. Both claim to provide a second disc that can be used to instanly fire up a PC with all settings, drivers, software, and data in place. They must be different in some way otherwise what would be the point in having both?
Migration sets up the windows environment without certain drivers so it can finish booting and plug and play (or you install) drivers for new hardware. For example if you want to move your existing windows installation to a different motherboard and chipset.
You do not need migration to keep using same hardware, to just have a backup drive with same working windows installation.
Disclaimer: I have not used this software, just going by what other partition backup/copy apps call a migration.
My sincere thanks for your post. You have understood my question and drilled down to an informative answer that I can understand.
One method can be used as a complete backup to reinstall on the original machine. The other can be used to install on a different machine, or the same one that has had major components replaced.
There is a lot of confusion because the word clone can mean a lot of things.
It originally meant an exact copy. Nowadays it can just mean copy with a variety of options, e.g. file based, block based, all sectors. used sectors, with or without without retaining the original disk sig and so on.
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The OS migration feature in Disk genius is for transferring the operating system from one disk to another while keeping both disks bootable.
It automatically selects the partitions needed by the operating system to function. If there are other partitions on the source disk, they can optionally be included in the migration.
Although everything looks and functions the same for the end user, it is not an exact copy because that can cause problems if the source and target are online at the same time. The target disk does not have the same disk or partition id as the source and the bcd store and os letter are automatically adjusted to reflect the new locations . It is excellent and the best I have come across for that job.
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It has got nothing to do with a completely different feature some imaging programs have that are called things like "universal restore" or "physical to physical adjust" .
Last edited by SIW2; 3 Days Ago at 10:26.
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