Best way to clone a second hard drive?

sjt269 · 5 Oct 2012 at 19:54

Hey all,

I'm currently running an SSD as a boot drive, and a 320Gb drive as a second data drive. I've got a 1Tb drive arriving tomorrow which I want to replace the 320Gb one with. I've got a bunch of programs installed to my secondary hard drive (mainly music and recording programs), so I was advised last time I asked to clone rather than to just copy and paste.

Essentially, what's the best, easiest and fastest way of doing this? Free would be nice, but not essential. I've got a few results from Google that look good, just wondering if there are any particular favourites from round these parts?

Thanks,
Steven

wazza300 · 5 Oct 2012 at 20:49

Macrium reflect

sjt269 · 6 Oct 2012 at 00:18

Thanks, it looks good, I'll give it a shot. Anything particular reason for recommending this one?

wazza300 · 6 Oct 2012 at 00:41

Yeah its free,paragon migrate is good too but you have to buy it,unless you know where to look

unleashed · 6 Oct 2012 at 08:05

+1 Macrium Reflect

blueseidboy · 6 Oct 2012 at 12:57

I've used acronis is many times without issue and can recommend it, but its not free

welshdragon · 6 Oct 2012 at 14:03

wazza300 said:
Macrium reflect

Used twice this morning to clone two os disks to larger ones. Quick, simple and free.

sjt269 · 6 Oct 2012 at 18:09

Thanks guys, I went for Reflect. Cloning in progress, we'll see how this goes!

sjt269 · 6 Oct 2012 at 19:34

Okay, clone done, seems to have worked fine. Now I just need to extend the partition to include the entire 1Tb - any advice on how to do this?

:edit:

Okay, disconnected the old drive and changed the drive labels, looks like it's working so far. All my desktop icons referring to programs on the cloned drive have changed to the 'unknown' icon, which is irritating, but I guess I can always replace them manually.

:edit2:

Cured by a restart! And used the built-in Windows tool to resize the partition, so all is well!

unleashed · 7 Oct 2012 at 15:26

sjt269 said:
Cured by a restart! And used the built-in Windows tool to resize the partition, so all is well!

Was just going to post:

Computer Management
Disk Management
Right click on Volume - Click on Extend

but you managed to work it out :cool:

sjt269 · 7 Oct 2012 at 16:25

Google came to my rescue.

I wasn't aware that Windows could resize partitions on its own, I thought I still needed third-party software to do that. You learn something new every day.

unleashed · 7 Oct 2012 at 16:35

sjt269 said:
Google came to my rescue.

I wasn't aware that Windows could resize partitions on its own, I thought I still needed third-party software to do that. You learn something new every day.

Even cooler is Macrium Reflects ability to be able to automatically resize a volume during a clone to a target disk smaller than the source disk, providing there is sufficient capacity on the target disk. :cool:

Zarf · 8 Oct 2012 at 02:51

Paragon SSD Migrate is good, I got mine when they were giving away licenses for free

If you have an Intel SSD there's a free (Acronis based) migration tool available on the Intel Website which also works flawlessly.

I've also used dd from a linux live CD, works well if you're going from a smaller drive to a larger one, but there's a bit more faffing around.