Imaging "C:\"

[beauparc]

First I must apologise if this is in the wrong forum and I will repost if necessary.

I have two HDDs in my computer. The boot drive "C:" is a Samsung HD103SI running at 5,400 rpm and connected to SATA1. Second drive "F:" is a Samsung HD103UJ running at 7,200 rpm and connected to SATA2.

Will I gain much by using the 7,220 HDD as the boot drive instead of the 5,400 HDD?

Am I correct in assuming that all I basically need to do is to format drive "F:", create an image of drive "C:" onto it and swap the SATA leads over?

Any help and advice will be most gratefully accepted and acknowledged.

 

[gregrocker]

You don't need to format the target HD as there is formatting already on the image. You want unallocated space, or wipe the HD first: Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

If your image is stored on external as is common, you can disconnect the source HD and plug target HD into SATA1 or DISK0, set it first to boot in BIOS Setup after CD/DVD drive. Otherwise save image to a Primary partition on source HD and leave it plugged in as secondary HD.

Boot the 7 DVD, REpair CD, or other imaging boot disk to reimage from external or source HD partition to target HD. System Image Recovery

 

[beauparc]

Thank you for your kind response gregrocker.

I have decided to format drive F: (there's nothing worth keeping on it). Using Macrium reflect, I will then image drive C: onto F: and make it bootable. I will then restart, go into BIOS, reset the boot order and reboot. Provided all is OK after a couple of weeks running, I'll then format what is now C: and use it for something else.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me.

 

[gregrocker]

Just delete F in Disk Mgmt to prepare it for imaging. Formatting is the term for preparing partition for an install and is not used for preparing for imaging, since the image already contains formatting. You want a deleted or wiped HD or partition unallocated space for reimaging onto.

 

[beauparc]

Ah, light dawns!! Now I understand!

Also....

When I said "imaging" I should have said "cloning" which, with Macrium will make the disk bootable.

Thanks again Gregrocker.

 

[gregrocker]

I don't know if Macrium has a cloning feature as do the WD and Seagate free Premium Acronis apps. But imaging will work fine if that's all you've got.

 

[whs]

Don't forget to image and restore the 100MB system partition too. Free Macrium has no "cloning" facility as such.

You might even want to consider using the Windows7 imaging because that transports the 100MB system partition automatically.

I am usually not a real friend of Windows7 imaging, but in this particular case it may be more practical.

 

[kado897]

Free Macrium v5 has cloning.

 

[Corazon]

It always depends on the definition of cloning - some say cloning is a direct disk-to-disk copy.

Others, myself included, think of it as either directly copying or imaging a partition but in its entirety, with all sectors, regardless of whether they're used or unused by the filesystem on that partition.

To my knowledge, all versions of Macrium can do the latter (simply by not using "intelligent copy").

 

[kado897]

In "macrium Speak" cloning is copying disk to disk but as you say you have the option of "intelligent copy" (much faster if there is not much on the disk) or sector by sector.

 

[beauparc]

Again, many thanks to you all for taking the time to reply.

Last night I downloaded V5 of Macrium Reflect and it does support cloning. There is a good demo on Youtube (can't find it now!) showing how to drag and drop all partitions of the boot disk for cloning.

I'm going to carry out this operation this week and will post back details on how things went.

One question which hasn't yet been answered is how much, if any, benefit may I expect from using a 7,200 rpm disk in place of a 5,400 disk?

Once again, many thanks to you all.

 

[whs]

Free Macrium v5 has cloning.

View attachment 186847

Thanks Kado for clarifying that. I am still on 4.2.

 

[kado897]

Free Macrium v5 has cloning.

View attachment 186847

Thanks Kado for clarifying that. I am still on 4.2.

No problem Wolfgang.

 

[gregrocker]

One question which hasn't yet been answered is how much, if any, benefit may I expect from using a 7,200 rpm disk in place of a 5,400 disk?

Well obviously you will get faster read/writes, but not as noticeably as with an SSD.

I would not want a 5400rpm HD. A friend's has a 2 minute startup traced only to that. Dell paired a 5400 with Core2Duo which also tells a lot about Dell.

 

[beauparc]

Thanks Gregrocker, just as I thought.

 

[mjf]

Transfer rate is quite a bit faster on the outer tracks. I would recommend an OS/ installed programs partition of around 100-200GB as the second partition after the system reserved (if you have one). If you have a system reserved it is better to make it ~200MB than the default 100MB to avoid shadow storage copy issues when using Windows imaging.

The 7200rpm vs 5400rpm and outer tracks is all about radial velocity/transfer speed.

 

[beauparc]

Well.....that was a lot easier than I had expected!

First of all I cleaned the target disk as advised. I then ran the cloning tool in Macrium. It stopped with an error - something to do with "pipelines". Rebooted and ran it again with same error.

Looking on my machine I found a copy of Easeus. Found the cloning option and tried that.

Perfect. It took about an hour to do it's thing and all seemed good.

Restart, into BIOS and reset boot order.

Bingo! Here I am running off the cloned disk without any worries. I'll use it like this for a while to make sure everything is running properly before I do anything else.

Thanks to everyone for the help and advice. It really was greatly appreciated.