What's the easiest way to clone a system HDD?

bledd · 15 Aug 2008 at 14:33

use the acronis bootable cd (have to pay to be able to make it -£25 for the whole product), from there, you can take an image of the laptop drive and save it say to a network location (not wireless) or a usb hard drive

then put the new drive in, and restore from network / usb hard drive using the bootable ccd

probedb · 15 Aug 2008 at 15:46

Good point! Really should use Acronis properly, actually have paid for the full version

dan7827 · 15 Aug 2008 at 18:37

A vote for Acronis here, recommended for all types of backups. Not sure how the free version compares though.

benskia · 25 Sep 2008 at 22:11

Bah.
Trying to download the trial from the acronis website, but I just get a blank explorer page and no download starts.

Grrr.

bledd · 26 Sep 2008 at 08:59

you need the full one to use the bootable disc, just buy it from their site, it's cheap as

benskia · 27 Sep 2008 at 23:41

okay.
I just used Easy Migrate and it copied my c: drive to my new harddisk which is currently f: drive.

It's apparently made it bootable. But when my PC restarted, the c: drive is still the old drive and f: is still f:

How do I change it now to boot from the new harddrive where I have migrated too?

Edit:

Just tried unplugging the old hard drive and now the new drive does read as c: and is bootable. Yey!
But... if I plug my old drive back in, that comes up as c: again.
How can I now reuse my old drive? I cant delete the contents because I need it plugged in to do that & then it is the boot drive.

Grrr.

Tombo · 28 Sep 2008 at 00:05

Go into the BIOS and change the boot priority so that the new drive is at the top.

benskia · 28 Sep 2008 at 08:49

Righto, thanks. But wont that make my boot drive f:
Dont really like the sounds of that. It's so habitual having c: as the boot.

benskia · 28 Sep 2008 at 10:56

Last update for you, because I'm sorted now...

I moved the new harddrive to be in the first SATA port in the mobo.
Now it boots from this as c: and the old harddrive is f:

All done.
Cool.

Tombo · 28 Sep 2008 at 16:02

To answer your question anyway, you could have booted up windows on the new drive as a f and then change the drive letter around in a few minutes.

Deleted member 77746 · 28 Sep 2008 at 18:04

True Acronis Home Edition is an excellent pieace of software. Worth every single penny it costs.