Best software to clone a hard drive?

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hey guys, im wanting to clone my 500GB windows drive to a 120GB solid state drive.

i will cut the 500gb down so it has less than 120gb of files on (obviously)
but what is the best cloning software that allows me to clone one directly to the other via motherboard sata cables?

i want to do this because i want to keep my windows activation, games, keys, etc.

Thanks.
 
I've always used Acronis True Image, found it to be very reliable and pretty fast too. It's not free in the full form however, there are cut down free ones floating around such as the WD version.
 
I've always used Acronis True Image, found it to be very reliable and pretty fast too. It's not free in the full form however, there are cut down free ones floating around such as the WD version.

nice, i've never cloned a drive before? is there any compatibility issues or is it EXACT cloning so it thinks its the same drive as before? (i know windows is funny with drivers and such)
 
Hmm, well most of the time it's fine. You need to make sure you're transferring the mbr too as it's likely that it is on the drive you wish to clone from. This should let it boot, then it's just a case of telling the BIOS which one you wish to boot from first. Personally, I back up the first OS disk to another (in the form of a disk image file) then I restore that image back to the OS SSD. That way you have a backup in case it really goes **** up, which you'll wish you'd made if it does.
 
Hmm, well most of the time it's fine. You need to make sure you're transferring the mbr too as it's likely that it is on the drive you wish to clone from. This should let it boot, then it's just a case of telling the BIOS which one you wish to boot from first. Personally, I back up the first OS disk to another (in the form of a disk image file) then I restore that image back to the OS SSD. That way you have a backup in case it really goes **** up, which you'll wish you'd made if it does.

Good point, well i have an external so i'll try to keep a copy on that.

Aslong as i copy the data, MBR and boot.ini files i should be alright i reckon.

Thanks for the help!
 
Which OS is it? I'd just reduce the size of the drive down to less than about 100GB first, then do the backup if you can. Then you can just backup everything on the drive rather than worrying about boot files and so on.
 
Which OS is it? I'd just reduce the size of the drive down to less than about 100GB first, then do the backup if you can. Then you can just backup everything on the drive rather than worrying about boot files and so on.

Windows 7 home premium, i did have 385gb of stuff on it originally, having to copy quite abit to my external ... lol

cant wait for the super-fast SSD to come though...
 
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