mirror HD instead of reinstall?

[Sabotage]

My harddrive recently broken and i had to get a replacement from seagate. the new drive is identical in size but it's a 7200.12 and i am currently using a 7200.11. ANYWAYS, i was wondering if there is a way to move everything on this harddrive to this new one so i don't have to do a fresh install? i was reading about mirroring but that feature is only for professional and up. Can anyone recommend anything to me?

 

[gregrocker]

You need a functioning HD to clone or image over to another. You can try running the maker's diagnostic/repair extended CD scan HD Diagnostic followed by Disk Check on all partitions from the DVD/Repair CD Command Line. This may return it to service.

Use drive imaging with built-in Win7 Backup Imaging, free Macrium Reflect, Paragon 11 or Acronis's premium cloning/imaging suite which comes free if you have a WD or Seagate drive involved.

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
System Image Recovery
Macrium - Image your system
Seagate Acronis cloning free util
WD Acronis free cloning app

 

[Sabotage]

Okay, i'm going to try the Seagate program, thanks!

 

[bobkn]

Just curious.

You wish to clone a broken drive. How broken is it?

 

[Sabotage]

Just curious.

You wish to clone a broken drive. How broken is it?

I am not entirely sure of the situation or how to explain it so i'll do my best.

a few weeks ago i booted up and nothing was loading properly and there was massive lag trying to do anything. safe mode worked fine, figured that some option i turned off was causing it so after trying to figure that out i gave up and reformatted.(figuring windows might have gone corrupt?) but now on this clean copy i could hear odd noises coming from the harddrive, these noises corresponded with lag on screen and mostly happened when looking for files. ran some seatool tesets, failed the long generic. asked seagate for a replacement. here we are. not sure if the 2 events are related but hope this fixs my problems.

I am also thinking the write caching ("enable write caching on this device") might be to blame. i have a backup battery connected to my rig but i don't think it makes a difference for this option. (this option seems dangerous, why is it on by default?)

any thoughts?