Restore from external SATA drive in enclosure with eSATA interface

[Hikertrash]

If you get a Seagate you can clone your present drive with Seagate DiscWizard (free download on Seagate site) which is a stripped down version of Acronis True Image. It will automatically format and partition the new drive with the same ratio as the old (obviously best to be the same size or go from small to big).

You can also choose to make a backup image to restore your OS and programs but of course that won't work if your present drive fails.

if you go the latter route, make sure to create a bootable disk to run the program in case you ever need to do an image restore.

I've used it twice to make clones when upgrading to bigger HDD's and it worked flawlessly.

 

[New7user7]

Thanks for that, Hikertrash.

You said you went to a bigger HDD. My new Seagate Momentus XL is smaller (500GB compared to current 650GB resident Toshiba HDD). Have you heard of DiscWizard successfully cloning to a bootable Seagate in this way? The reason I'm doublechecking is because 3 of the 4 partitions are not letter-drive, so I assume that they are these hidden system partitions that I hear of. I don't know if they I should be shrinking them. Now the letter-drive, I can shrink that. It's more than 90% empty.

As well, I'll be using the higher performance Seagate as my resident HDD once I've cloned my system to it. The current resident drive will become my external weekly clone (bootable). So I will also be cloning from 500GB Seagate to the 650GB Toshiba. I was wondering if DiscWizard can help even when the source HDD is Seagate and the target HDD is not.

Apart from that, any comment on issues and resolutions (e.g. SmartAlign) relating to sector size would be appreciated, though knowledge about that seems hard to come by.

Thanks!