I'm thinking of getting a larger hard drive and wanted to know if there is an easy way to transfer everything to the new drive so my system is EXACTLY as it is now with minimal effort. In the past when I had to do a clean install of the OS I would make a backup and restore, but then had to reinstall programs, etc. and I was hoping to avoid that.
Thanks!!
I would run sysprep, image the machine as is, host it on a usb or external drive then deploy that image onto the new drive.
Hello edicus.
A lot of people use a 3rd party like Acronis or Paragon to make a clone of the drive / partition and then re-image that to the new HDD.
Award-Winning Backup and Recovery Software
System Backup | PARAGON Software Group - partition software, free download of Paragon system backup
That is of course if you have the money.
Honestly, you can make an image within Windows 7 and store it on an external HD. I am assuming though that you are already on 7 and you are just wanting to take everything to a bigger HD right?
Instructions on how to do that are on this forum.
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
BTW BFK, looks like you posted in that one too remember?
Yes I'm aware of that, I just see a lot of people having issues with the backup facility in Windows 7 and I'd rather not suggest an option that may not allow the backup to run.
Let me re-phrase that, what I'm seeing is a lot of people discussing that occasionally when it's time to re-image to the new HDD or just to clone back to the original HDD that the saved backup / clone will not run; to me if I had files that were important me I would rather use a dependable SW program like listed above.
Western Digital has a free cloning program that you can use if the destination is a Western Digital Drive.
WD Support
To build on what king was saying, The issues I've noticed is that the 'backups' that windows creates are specific to their hardware layers. Thus trying to deploy that "backup" when your hard drive fails will be rather hard if not impossible due to the HAL that's already installed.
My suggestion is to sysprep the installation prior to true 'imaging' with any imaging software you can find.
That sysprep step strips the drivers and HAL enabling you to install it on any piece of relevant hardware.
This is normally done in large domain environments but the logic is the same. System backups are handy for OS corruptions, but honestly the OS can be repaired in so many ways the backups become more and more useless on a day to day basis. It's when your hardware fails you'll truly need the "backup" and when you can't install it on a new hardware set... what happens then? They fresh install and create a thread called "How do I restore my old information from backup".
I'm as you Bare Foot Kid, readed threads of windows 7 doesn't re-image properly to the new Hdd....
So, one question as the two models you presented here are listed the same price, and i need one of those two (i saw also Drive Clone 6 pro at same price).
Will you be more for Acronis or the Paragon suite?
-I need to do a complete OEM System Image to re-image to a new 2.5" IDE Hdd
-I need to repair before the .net framework 3.0 & 3.5 with a Boot Corrector
as i can't get rid of their proper installers in XP SP3 or re-install them correctly.
your advices are welcome!
Last edited by NoN; 16 Mar 2010 at 16:28.
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