Changing a hardrive help with data please

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi all,

I have a hard drive that is showing bad health, and I need to change it. I have the replacement, and my plan is to image the existing drive on to the new drive, then remove the old drive and use the new drive.

It is SATA so my question is, is it as simple as install new drive (done) then create an image from the existing drive to the new drive? My concern is that I am going to be using imaging software on the drive I am ghosting. Does that make sense?

As an alternative, I have another machine that has 3 spare bays. would I be better removing both drives from machine A, placing them in machine B, and then creating an image from the one drive (failing) to the new drive, and then replacing that in machine A?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kixo]

What we do is:

1 Install new HDD into final destination computer
2 Use a caddy and plug in old/original HDD
3 boot using a live disc
4 choose source and target and then just wait

the live boot makes it so much simpler!

 

[pcproblems]

If the drive that you are replacing is the drive that contains your operating system then you could use something like clonezilla

 

[OldWelshGuy]

yep that is my problem, Maybe I didn't make it clear. There is a single internal drive on this particular machine, which includes data & Operating system. so can I run the cloning software on the drive I am cloning? That is the question I guess.

 

[pcproblems]

With clonezilla you would burn it to a CD/DVD and reboot your machine making sure that the CD Rom is the first boot device on your machine. The CD would contain a small linux operating system that would allow the pc to boot . Many computers allow you to tap F12 at bootup to see the options.

 

[mit74]

Yes you can clone a drive that's running the OS with certain software. Clonezilla does this I think. Also bare in mind if the drive is failing you could potentially clone the bad/corrupt files too.

 

[yellowlawn]

If you are creating an image of one disk you need somewhere to store the newly created image. If your disk is on it's way out, I'd suggest not on the disk you are trying to clone. Get yourself an external USB drive and clone your O/S HDD to the external drive. Or alternatively a HDD Caddy and a second disk.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Yes you can clone a drive that's running the OS with certain software. Clonezilla does this I think. Also bare in mind if the drive is failing you could potentially clone the bad/corrupt files too.

Yes that is my worry. I think there is a way to repair windows (vista home premium in this case) using the disk isn't there?

My plan was clone the drive, so I have a snapshot of where I am. attempt to repair the OS and if it goes pete Tong then run from the new drive.

 

[Deleted member 59730]

Also consider a SSD rather than a disk.

I have just fitted a pair in a Mac and the speed is increased.

 

[Paul_Rosser]

Rather than running the imaging software from the existing drive personally I would install both drives, then boot using something like Hirens boot cd which contains a standalone version of Windows and a lot of disk imaging tools.

Then clone one to the other and provided no physical damage of the source all should be well, take the source drive out and boot from the new one.

Whilst you can clone a drive whilst it's running the cloning software as you generally have to boot into windows first then it will be slower and can cause problems, so I always use hiren or similar.