Clone to a smaller drive ?

AgedIdiot · 21 Jan 2009 at 23:03

My 750gb Samsung is failing so decided to copy the whole thing to an existing 250gb Hitachi drive I've got.

In the long term will be installing Vista 64 bit when I buy a replacement for the samsung drive but for next coupla months would like to complete games etc already installed on the Samsung which is running xp 32bit home.

As already have the Hitachi drive thought - keep it simple by copying/cloning the Samsung to the Hitachi ; remove the Samsung (piece of ..... that it is) and continue but using the Hitachi with ALL info installed.

Realised that would need software so had a look at Acronis , which does a nice 30 day trial , and was all ready to go ahead when thought occured ( bit slow on uptake sometimes) that all cloning discussions/instructions I had read appeared to assume that the new drive was bigger than the old one --- Not the case here!!

However the actual amount of info on the Sammy drive is ,in fact, 100gb.

Am I creating problems that do not exist?

If it will not work with Acronis any other software that will do the job?

Guidance would be appreciated. :cool:

Off subject - this was my 1st Samsung drive ; in past have always used 'cheap' Maxtor/Hitachi but given excellent reviews of the Sammy decided I would invest in quality. Mistake !! Never had any issues with Maxtor/Hitachi but with the Sammy after only 5 mths of light use it's failing

Will not be buying Samsung HD's in a hurry again !!!

bledd · 22 Jan 2009 at 10:23

as long as the size of the data is less than 250, you'll have zero problems with acronis.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17967123

-two methods how to use it there

the first time i used acronis was from a 250gb to a 40gb

AgedIdiot · 23 Jan 2009 at 12:25

Many , many thanks bledd.

- will give it a go in next day or so

Moeks · 23 Jan 2009 at 16:39

Yep, works fine. I used Acronis Migrate Easy to do exactly this just this morning. I imaged a 640gb drive to a 320gb one, no problems.

Oddly my failing drive is also a Samsung, a 640gb F1, it's been throwing S.M.A.R.T errors up for a few days now and has lost its MBR once and hosed the entire partition structure once, thus it was time to decide that it really most definitely is broken. Samsung's own diagnostic software also says it's faulty, this is with less than 2000 hours powered on aswell.

It's the first problem I have had with a Samsung drive though, and I have had a few over the years. I have a couple of the first Samsung 3.5" drives, the Spinpoint 160gb models from a few years back, one of which is reading over 40,000 hours of use so far, and no problems.

Hopefully the 2 1TB F1's I have as my storage and backup drives will be ok, no sign of anything unusual from them yet anyway.

AgedIdiot · 24 Jan 2009 at 15:40

Acronis worked perfectly

bledd,my thanks again !

Am now testing the Samsung drive - error so far is simply ' S.M.A.R.T. threshold exceeded '

Running surface scan at moment which will take some time I know ; but it looks like rma time

Moeks · 24 Jan 2009 at 16:36

Is the S.M.A.R.T error a 'B8 unknown attribute' by chance, in HDTune or Speedfan ?

AgedIdiot · 24 Jan 2009 at 19:46

Is the S.M.A.R.T error a 'B8 unknown attribute' by chance, in HDTune or Speedfan ?

I seem to reccolect something like that - I did make a note of more fuller report - see thread below

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17966667&highlight=username_AgedIdiot

Moeks · 25 Jan 2009 at 02:06

Arrh ok, looks like something a bit different to the one I have been seeing then.

dms · 25 Jan 2009 at 17:58

I've been doing all sorts of mucking around trying to get 2 old HD onto 1 large new one. Acronis isn't free (didn't try the demo that might have been good enough) so I ended up using Clonezilla which is a bit hardcore but would also have done what you were after.

AgedIdiot · 25 Jan 2009 at 19:49

Having carried out the full scan Samsung 'Hutil' (Sammy test program) suggested it came down to fact that the only error was still 'S.M.A.R.T. threshold exceeded' but
Hutil went on to suggest that all info be deleted - wipe clean .

Did that and rang test again still 'S.M.A.R.T. threshold exceeded'. So def RMA time - very dissapointed with this, do not expect failures after 6mths of light use, so will , if I can , be swapping for a different HD (the 640mb West Dig Caviar Black looks good and gets decent :cool:

user reviews).

When I bought the Samsung I was very much relying on magazine reviews , which do not ,(well the ones I read don't) test for long (or medium) term reliability. Have now read user reviews on a certain US e-tailers web pages detailing very poor reliability for the Samsung drive after a few months - should have read more before buying !!

Then again it may be that I was just lucky (its failing not failed & I was able to clone) /unlucky (it is failing but I might have got one that lasted well) AND next time (ho, ho) it'll be brilliant

May be going a little OTT but ,for me, a failed HD could be such a nightmare and is so time consuming to deal with (Saturday Cloning then testing and cleaning per Samsung & currently running Darik's Boot & Nuke to clean) would prefer to have less speed and better reliability &/or pay more so that quality(testing etc) is better.