Software to Clone a HDD?

Skeeter

Skeeter

Skeeter

Caporegime
Joined
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My GF is reluctant to let me wipe and reinstall her laptopo as she has a bunch of software on there she no longer has the installation media for. I'm moving her to an SSD and then going to update to Windows 10.

So the simplest solution would be to simply clone the HDD as it is now onto the SSD and then run with that, and then upgrade to W10 from there.

Whats the best software to clone a HDD, including all the boot information etc thats in it so I can do a straight swap?

Thanks
 
For free aomei backupper is good. Just do a full system backup. Swap the hard drives boot the computer with the CD / USB you can make in the program and then point it at the backup and it will restore System reserved, Boot stuff and everything. And of course the OS.

When i just want a quick backup and it to work its the software i use :)
 
Sounds like a plan. Does it back everything up to an external drive and then restore from that back over the new SSD?
 
Yeh :) You can pick what / where. (DVD / USB / Another internal Hard drive)

Just remember to create the boot media before you pull the hard drive out though :)
 
Macrium Reflect.

What I would do is use it to create an image (rather than do a direct clone straight away). Think of it as a zip file of your entire drive.

Create a bootable Macrium Reflect CD/usb drive.
Boot from this with an external hard drive connected (or you could use a network share).

Use Macrium to take an image of the system drive, store the image in somewhere like.. D:\MacriumImage\gfsLaptop-2015-07-31.tib

Once it's done, turn it off.


Fit the SSD, boot again from the CD/USB stick.

Now pick the 'restore' option. and browse to that file.


I like to keep an image handy, just in case something happens.



Before taking the image, I'd give the system a good clean up.

Run CCleaner Slim.
Run Disk Cleanup, it's built into Windows, tell it to clean up system files.
Remove all system restore points.

Use Treesize Free to find large folders and purge any files you can. Often get large files in your user application data folder, work out if they're safe to remove.


I would highly recommend a fresh install on the SSD though. What software does she not have the installer for?
 
bledd. said:
I would highly recommend a fresh install on the SSD though. What software does she not have the installer for?
Click to expand...

This if you give us a list we might be able to help you find it. She will need her CD key's / Licences though. (They are most likely available to view in the program)
 
Yeah I'm going to clean it up a lot before I do it, its not been reformatted for years and is full of rubbish.

The software is all really obscure stuff used for work. The most recent is from a course she is doing and she had to take her laptop to the course and they installed it there, so she has no access to the media or any licensing. To get it back you have to re-attend the course or hire the assessment kit it comes as part of, which is a few hundred quid.

Its simpler just to clone it at the moment, as much as it irks me.
 
I use Macrium Reflect free version to created image of my laptop hard drive on thur then ran Windows 10 update to installed Windows 10 on my Dell laptop with Windows 8.1 Core. If installation went wrong then I would had Macrium Reflect to restored Windows 8.1.
 
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