clone a hard drive to an external drive? or maybe a second pc

[vaklrider7]

What I am attempting to do is clean up my wife's Toshiba L555 laptop. the problem is she can not be without it because of her work requirements. (her life is on that drive) so can I clone the toshiba drive onto another drive that she can work on till I get her laptop cleaned up? I am even willing to give up my computer for a day or two if I need to clone onto it so she can keep working. and how do I go about it. (obviously I am less than an "expert" I know just enough to hurt myself)

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I don't think Windows is going to boot from an external drive.

What do you mean by "clean up"? Reinstall Windows?

Even if you "clone" (a loosely used word) her installation to some other location, such as to your PC, you'd have issues because your PC hardware differs from her laptop hardware.

Does she ever sleep? Do it then.

Does she ever have a day off? Do it then.

Is her laptop Windows installation backed up?

Is her laptop data backed up?

Regardless---"cloning" is an imperfect procedure. You'd be nuts to assume it will work if "her life is on that drive" and "she cannot be without it". Cloning is an unnecessary complication to what I assume you want to do----correct some errors/issues on her laptop. I'd find a way to work around her schedule.

What happens if her hard drive fails at sundown today? What's your plan?

 

[strollin]

As ignatzatsonic said, it depends on what you mean by cleanup. Booting the cloned drive would be problematic but you could attach the cloned drive to your PC as an external drive (not boot from it) which would allow you to move or delete or whatever the various data files on her machine. However, you would not be able to un-install programs or change system files.

Another issue you might encounter is accounting for any changes she makes to the machine between the time you cloned the drive and your clean up.

It would be best to do your cleanup at sometime when she is NOT using her laptop.

 

[vaklrider7]

My wife is extremely nervous about "repairs" She took her laptop into "black and white" squad and they ended up wiping the drive and doing a clean install, it took her over 3 months to recreate all her lost contacts.(thought that would have been job one at the box store-doing a back up) any way , her laptop has become slow, the cd/dvd drive will not read photo cd. (she is a Realtor) We went to M-soft and downloaded Mr. fix it, it agrees there is a problem but it can't seem to fix it. The drive works fine if you load movies, or data cd , just will not recognize photos,(say's the disc is empty ) What I was hoping to do is put the window 7 disc back in and run a repair. but after our last fiasco I'm a little gun shy.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

You shouldn't attempt a repair or anything else unless her data and contacts, etc are backed up---particularly since the fiasco with the "black and white squad". You've given no indication that they are.

You may or may not be able to improve things within an hour with tools such as CCleaner, Malwarebytes, and a good virus scan, but we have no idea if any of that has already been done. That would be short of a clean install or repair installation.

A repair install of course won't help with hardware issues, if you have any.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

X2 on making and maintaining backups.

 

[vaklrider7]

We have webroot anti virus on the laptop and ccleaner both. and have run cleaner several times in the last week

 

[mitchell65]

I'll jump in here and suggest that unless you back up all the data and contacts then it would be dangerous if you carried out any sort of "Fixing". Do that back up to an external drive then put it on a cloud backup just to be doubly sure!

 

[vaklrider7]

ok we have a rocketfish external drive that is SUPPOSE to be backing it up every night. as I said earlier, I know just enough to cause serious injury! so how to I check the backup drive to make sure ALL her data has truly been stored? ( sorry for all you more experienced type to have to bear this) at 61 I'm doing good to remember how to turn the darn thing on

 

[mitchell65]

At 61 you are still a slip of a boy. What do you mean it is SUPPOSE to back up? Rocketfish is just an enclosure for an internal hard drive. Did someone else set up a schedule of the daily back ups? Whatever, if the data and contacts are that important it's not a bad idea to back up twice. Do you need help in performing an actual backup? If so first go disk management, expand the window to full screen and post a screenshot here on the Forum. Here's how:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html
Use the Snipping Tool Option, here's how:
How to Use the Snipping Tool in Vista

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Post the screenshot as Mitchell suggests.

You need to actually examine that Rocketfish external drive in Windows Explorer and satisfy yourself and your wife that her stuff, whatever it is, is found on the Rocketfish as well as on the internal hard drive. "Suppose to" isn't good enough. You need to actually find those files on the Rocketfish and assure yourself that those files can be opened just as if they were on the internal drive.

And I'd probably spend 10 bucks or so on a 16GB USB thumb drive. They are about the size of a BIC cigarette lighter and plug into a port on the laptop. You can then manually copy from the internal drive to the USB thumb drive. Copy as much as possible of wife's data to it--including contacts. COPY not MOVE. I'm guessing 16 GB is big enough. If not, they make them much larger for a bit more money. Why do this? It's insurance against the possibility that your trusty Rocketfish isn't doing what you think and/or drops dead tomorrow.

It's up to you and wife to discover where her important stuff is found on her laptop hard drive and to copy those folders. On an ordinary installation, that location is probably under C:\users\wife's_user_name_whatever_it_is, but it could be anywhere, depending on her sense of organization.

Don't forget to back up bookmarks and anything related to email.

If you do this, you at least have some assurance that you can recover her data if your attempts at "cleaning up" her laptop mistakenly go very badly.

 

[mitchell65]

Once all the important files are backed up in at least two different locations, before you start the clean up, post exactly what you propose to do so that we may help you avoid a disaster. Are you anticipating using so called clean up programs?