Copying the OS hard drive to a new hard drive

Of course you can use an image of some sort. Most people seem to - cloning seems to have gone out of fashion.

Kbronski's original question is the one that is being responded to.

Actually, this intrigues me. Is it possible to clone a drive to a usb portable hard drive?

jebuchanan said:

Your all talking 'cloning' here. I did this from a WD drive to a Seagate drive without cloning.
Obviously the simple solution is to use a system backup (created with Windows Backup). I have a dedicated internal drive just for doing system backups.
Run the backup and do a complete (system) backup of your C: drive.
Remove the old drive and install the new drive.
Upon first boot, go into BIOS and ensure the new drive is the first drive (i.e. Drive 0) and set your Boot order (i.e. CD/USB/HDD0). Save this and reboot from your Windows install disk.
Select Repair as your option and restore the backup to the new drive with System Restore.
Reboot from the new HDD.
What could be simpler and effective solution?

Cloning? There is only one step as opposed to backup AND restore
Though my current system is restored from Windows 7 backup.
Also, with cloning, all of your restore points are kept while they are not with backup/restore.

Will the v11 BartPE work on v13 backups?

NO.

kbronski said:

Ahh, mine is usb2 sadly. I've looked at getting an e-sata drive but they're not the easiest to find, and not exactly the lowest price either.

Get yer own enclosure and use whatever drive you want. That is actually cheaper than buying a eSATA external drive from a vendor. And you get full SATA speeds.

For instance:

Newegg.com - Rosewill RX-358-S SLV (Silver) 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA External Enclosure w/Int.80mm Fan

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Quad Interface eS... (MEFW924AL1K) at OWC

(I have the latter) or just search newegg for "esata external enclosure"

beagrie07 said:

Hi, I'll be getting a new hard drive soon and I'm wondering if it is possible to copy the whole of my current C: drive including the OS to a new hard drive. Reason being the new hard drive will be faster and would be more beneficial for me.

Thanks

Hi, Why dont you kill 2 birds with 1 stone, Acronis true image will let you do this without fuss, plus you get a great backup software to boot. I have used several versions of true image to clone/upgrade hard drives and a tip is to do it using the rescue cd, and not in windows. Also make sure you follow the directions carefully, and remember to DISCONNECT the old hard drive before you reboot. Tis good

It appears you can do it with Partition Wizard ( free ) disk copy function.

SIW2 said:

It appears you can do it with Partition Wizard ( free ) disk copy function.

I will have to try that!