Cloning Hard Drive TANE installed on

ish6

Since 2001
Hello All --

TANE works beautifully -- no issues whatsoever ... I am going to clone the entire hard drive to a second hard drive so I can always have peace of mind if anything gets corrupted, or fail -- yes, I know there are other ways, but cloning a hard drive will also save windows 10, and all programs --- since this computer is working on all cylinders I've figure I clone the hard drive for a rainy day.

Anyhow, any good software out there I can use to clone the hard drives!?

Thanks for your suggestions!

Ish
 
Hi there, Ish
I have been very happy with Acronis True Image. http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/
This will do all kinds of cool backup stuff. You can save a hard disk image to DVD, for example, no need to waste space on another hard drive.
It will allow you clone to another HD too, of course.
Anyway, hope this helps! Best wishes, Ken

I agree with Ken. This will do the job well.

Thank you for your feedback, guys!!!;)
I will certainly look into it!

Ish
 
Acronis is good as is Paragon Backup and Restore, latest version is free at present. I've used both of them both for cloning and backups.
 
Acronis is good as is Paragon Backup and Restore, latest version is free at present. I've used both of them both for cloning and backups.

Thank you, Malc, for your feedback! I will look into Paragon also!

Take care now
Ish
 
Another vote for Acronis True Image 2017 - best in class - and here's another suggestion to consider: Sync Toy. (An Oldie, but a goodie from Microsoft Black-Ops developers...)
Simple and reliable and free to download.
My last OS drive clone was using the Samsung Magician software, but I think that is specific to their SSDs.
 
Wait a minute! Hold on! Stop! Do you guys mean I can add an external hard drive and clone my hard drive to it and use it for EVERYTHING? Doesn't Windows need to be installed on the original hard drive that's in the computer??? :eek:

Enlighten me fellas! :confused:
 
Wait a minute! Hold on! Stop! - Not so fast there, davesnow.
These clone tools will allow you to clone an entire hard drive including the operating system to a new hard drive (whether SSD or conventional) so that you can replace that old drive if needed and without you needing to reload applications and data and without the need to reinstall the operating system again.
BUT - I wouldn't recommend using this for an external backup drive - or attempting to run your entire PC from that either.
It is mainly intended for cloning your entire system image to a new internal drive that will replace your old one.
Notwithstanding that caution, however, tools such as Acronis and Sync Toy are excellent as general backup utilities enabling you to faithfully copy the contents of one drive over to another (including of course external drives) for backup and file synchronisation purposes.
Better than the inscrutable built-in backup and restore tools offered by Windows in any event.
 
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Wait a minute! Hold on! Stop! - Not so fast there, davesnow.
These clone tools will allow you to clone an entire hard drive including the operating system to a new hard drive (whether SSD or conventional) so that you can replace that old drive if needed and without you needing to reload applications and data and without the need to reinstall the operating system again.
BUT - I wouldn't recommend using this for an external backup drive - or attempting to run your entire PC from that either.
It is mainly intended for cloning your entire system image to a new internal drive that will replace your old one.
Notwithstanding that caution, however, tools such as Acronis and Sync Toy are excellent as general backup utilities enabling you to faithfully copy the contents of one drive over to another (including of course external drives) for backup and file synchronisation purposes.
Better than the inscrutable built-in backup and restore tools offered by Windows in any event.


Okay. Thanks Ace. My main problem is, I am running out of space on my internal HD. So it might be better if I bought a new internal hard drive (perhaps a SSD with more memory of course) and cloned my old hard drive into this new one?

Or should I take it a PC Doctor (PC Repair shop) and let them do it?
 
Most PC's have space and connections for between 2 and 6 hard drives, no need to replace a drive just add another internal one if you have the space.
 
Both Western digital and Seagate have free software that will clone to one of their drives, just go to their web sites. I prefer WD but that's just me.

Cheerio John
 
Adding another internal hard disk drive (whether SSD or conventional) is normally very easy to accomplish if you have a spare SATA or M2 port available on your motherboard.
In a mid-tower ATX case there are usually plenty of spare bays to which the physical drive can be installed.

Let's say you have an older conventional hard disk drive as your current C: Drive/ boot drive and you're running out of space.
What you can do is purchase a larger capacity HDD or SSD to replace it as your boot drive C:\ (whilst retaining the existing drive for continued use as a data storage drive. It (the old drive) would then be designated Drive D: or E:, depending upon what else, including DVD drives etc., might already be there.)
Assuming your current boot drive is functioning well (i.e. no OS issues, but you may well be running out of physical space) then to save having to do a complete operating system installation, plus reinstalling all of your current applications including T:ANE and TS12 etc. you can clone the old drive in its entirety (using one of the utilities mentioned earlier) and thus transferring the whole kit and caboodle onto the shiny new, higher capacity disk drive.

You can even use a smaller, faster SSD drive if you prefer, but the cloning becomes a tad more complex as you have to choose which applications including the OS can be safely fitted on the new drive and then which items will be left on the old source drive because they won't all fit. Obviously, it is best to go for a larger capacity and faster SSD than the existing drive though, if at all possible.

When I bought my Samsung EVO SSD it came with migration software for cloning the original drive (an older, smaller capacity SSD) and the operation took only a few minutes.
(Helps to have a USB 3.0 to SATA adapter available for this process, so you can clone the old drive to the new one before physically installing it into your case.)
Once cloned, insert the new drive into your case and unplug the old one temporarily so that you can boot to the new disk.
Assuming all has gone well, you can then reattach/ reinstate the old internal hard drive, which will now have a new drive letter/ logical disk drive name other than C:\.
After thorough testing of the new drive's operation, and installed applications brought over, you can then safely format the old one (after backing it up to your external drive once again just for good measure) and re-purpose it as a dedicated game drive or relegate it to additional data storage space.
 
@Ish6
If you know what you're doing, PC-wise, and you are only interested in preserving your data rather than improving performance, you could also consider setting up your existing hdd and a similar new one as a RAID 1 pair. You would then have all of your hdd content mirrored to the second drive on a continuous basis.

Setting up a RAID is not for the faint hearted, though, and you would DEFINITELY want to save an image somewhere safe before starting. I'm sure there is plenty of YouTube information out there (try Linus Tech Tips, maybe) regarding the process.

John
 
Hello Everyone --

Just too many to quote --

Cloning a hard drive for me is just simplistically making a copy in case something happens! --- Just a hard drive that can sit on my table just in case! -- In the passed I have made back up copies of the OS via DVD'S, and this helps reinstalled the OS from scratch --- no problem either activating windows, as I have done this a few times! --- Cloning the hard drive will save me from downloading over 30 of items into TANE and TR12, plus it has it's benefts too as most you all!

QUESTION: How often do you clone your hard drive?

Well, thanks for pouring in your comments, suggestions, and guidelines!
You all take care now!
Ish :wave:
 
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Okay. Thanks Ace. My main problem is, I am running out of space on my internal HD. So it might be better if I bought a new internal hard drive (perhaps a SSD with more memory of course) and cloned my old hard drive into this new one?

Or should I take it a PC Doctor (PC Repair shop) and let them do it?

The easiest fix for me, done it a bunch of times now, is getting a Samsung SSD, a USB to SATA (drive interface) adapter, and use the migration (cloning tool) software that somes with the drive. In each instance, I replaced the original drives with 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs. They have a TEN (10) years warranty, and are pretty darn fast. Once the process is done of migration, you simply shutdown the computer, pull the power, swap the SSD in place of your original drive. Best part, with the USB to SATA adapter, you can still grab anything you want from the original drive, if you wanted to, for whatever reason. Once you are confident and happy, you could format and reuse the old drive as more storage for whatever you like.
 
Looks good, davesnow. The hybrid drives bring the best of two worlds together at an affordable price.
Won't be as fast as a pure SSD, but it has plenty of capacity.
BTW, just how big was the drive you're replacing?
 
hey davesnow, as long as it is not a Seagate Barracuda drive, it should be good. The Barracuda ones have problems last couple of years.
 
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