Cloning a Hard Drive

[Prescott]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

I went back to the Western Digital Website to get the Acronis user
manual, and the Acronis disk management software is only for Windows
2000, XP, and Vista. It is not listed as being for Windows 7, and not
surprisingly, it apparently does not know how to clone a Windows 7 drive.

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition,
and then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does
anyone know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot
partition and end up with a bootable clone?

Thanks

 

[Thip]

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition, and
then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does anyone
know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot partition and
end up with a bootable clone?

Thanks

I've had mostly--but not perfect--luck with Macrium Reflect (free).

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

 

[Roy Smith]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

I went back to the Western Digital Website to get the Acronis user
manual, and the Acronis disk management software is only for Windows
2000, XP, and Vista. It is not listed as being for Windows 7, and not
surprisingly, it apparently does not know how to clone a Windows 7 drive.

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition,
and then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does
anyone know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot
partition and end up with a bootable clone?

Go to the Acronis website (www.acronis.com) and download the fully
functional demo to clone your drive. Just make sure you get the latest
edition which is Win 7 compatible (Acronis True Image Home 2010).

--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Professional

Timestamp: Saturday, June 05, 2010 5:21:51 PM

 

[Parko]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

I went back to the Western Digital Website to get the Acronis user
manual, and the Acronis disk management software is only for Windows
2000, XP, and Vista. It is not listed as being for Windows 7, and not
surprisingly, it apparently does not know how to clone a Windows 7
drive.

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition,
and then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does
anyone know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot
partition and end up with a bootable clone?

Thanks

I've had no trouble with Acronis WD Edition, however, try Clonezilla.
http://clonezilla.org/

 

[gumby patrol]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

Use the software to create an Acronis boot disk and use that to clone
the HDD. I own a few copies of Acronis and never install the Windfows
software, just use the boot disk and it will have no problems becuase it
just does a blind read. It's when you use the Windows software that you
will get possible compat issues and soemtimes bad clones.

BTW, Win7 has its own imaging software built in so you don't even need
Acronis Windows software to do what you want, it will also make a rescue
cdrom to restore the image without Windows installed. I've never used it
but know the software is already there for you to use.

 

[Canuck57]

Use the software to create an Acronis boot disk and use that to clone
the HDD. I own a few copies of Acronis and never install the Windfows
software, just use the boot disk and it will have no problems becuase it
just does a blind read. It's when you use the Windows software that you
will get possible compat issues and soemtimes bad clones.

BTW, Win7 has its own imaging software built in so you don't even need
Acronis Windows software to do what you want, it will also make a rescue
cdrom to restore the image without Windows installed. I've never used it
but know the software is already there for you to use.

Does it work? I ask this as I haven't seen a native home MS-Windows PC
ever recover using MS-Windows native tools. The only ones that seam to
work are vendor added recovery tools.

 

[Simon Jones]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

I went back to the Western Digital Website to get the Acronis user
manual, and the Acronis disk management software is only for Windows
2000, XP, and Vista. It is not listed as being for Windows 7, and not
surprisingly, it apparently does not know how to clone a Windows 7 drive.

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition,
and then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does
anyone know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot
partition and end up with a bootable clone?

Thanks

Partition Manager (Symantec) has a bootable CD which clones drives. I
haven't tried it for Win7 yet but I am guessing the filesystem is the
same as XP so it should work fine. It runs in DOS but does a good job of
the actual cloning.

 

[LSMFT]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

I went back to the Western Digital Website to get the Acronis user
manual, and the Acronis disk management software is only for Windows
2000, XP, and Vista. It is not listed as being for Windows 7, and not
surprisingly, it apparently does not know how to clone a Windows 7 drive.

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition,
and then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does
anyone know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot
partition and end up with a bootable clone?

Thanks

I use Clonezilla which is free, with no problems. You can't be using the
drive you are cloning you know. That's why a cloning program like
Clonezilla has a boot CD to operate the clone operation.

 

[Char Jackson]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

It sounds like you were accidentally trying to copy partitions instead
of entire disks. When you get into the disk clone mode, you won't see
or worry about partitions. You're just dealing with entire drives at
that point. Whatever is on the source disk will be recreated on the
destination disk. Note that if you're trying to clone the boot disk,
Acronis will require you to reboot so that the OS is unloaded.

 

[Bob Hatch]

I have a 320GB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive that I would like
to clone to a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. I downloaded
the Acronis disk management software from the Western Digital Website
and started trying to clone the drive. The Acronis Disk Management
software showed the 143MB partition after the Windows 7 boot partition
on the from drive, as Unallocated space, and it was clear that it was
not going to copy it.

I went back to the Western Digital Website to get the Acronis user
manual, and the Acronis disk management software is only for Windows
2000, XP, and Vista. It is not listed as being for Windows 7, and not
surprisingly, it apparently does not know how to clone a Windows 7 drive.

Does anyone out there know a procedure for copying the boot partition,
and then using the install disk to recreate the boot manager? Or does
anyone know of any free download that can clone a Windows 7 boot
partition and end up with a bootable clone?

Thanks

CopyWipe.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php

Download the CopyWipe for DOS, make a boot disk and work from that.

It's free and I've used it with Win 7.

--
The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism,
but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every
fragment of the socialist program until one day America
will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."
Norman Thomas
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

 

[Doum]

Does it work? I ask this as I haven't seen a native home MS-Windows
PC ever recover using MS-Windows native tools. The only ones that
seam to work are vendor added recovery tools.

Yes

 

[Prescott]

I went to www.acronis.com and downloaded the single workstation version
of Acronis 10, and tried to install it, but it wanted to install for a
particular user, not for the machine, and for that user it refused to
install unless I put a password on the account. If something else
doesn't work, I may do that, but for now, I'd rather try something else
than have Acronis tell me how to manage my accounts.

 

[Prescott]

I downloaded Clonezilla, and it is running now on my Windows 7 machine.
When it is finished, I'll see if it will boot.

 

[Prescott]

Does it work? I ask this as I haven't seen a native home MS-Windows PC
ever recover using MS-Windows native tools. The only ones that seam to
work are vendor added recovery tools.

I couldn't find the CD with Acronis True Image WD Edition that I burned
before, so I burned another CD and booted from it. It still doesn't
know what to do with the 143.5 MB area that Windows 7 creates when it is
installed.

 

[Prescott]

I've had no trouble with Acronis WD Edition, however, try Clonezilla.
http://clonezilla.org/

Okay, clonezilla has succeeded for the most part.

My Windows 7 computer has booted to, and is now running on the 1TB
drive. I'll wait a few days to make sure that there aren't any glitches
before I scrub the 320 GB Windows 7 drive and clone the 76GB WD Raptor
Windows XP drive to it, but so far it looks good.

Acronis WD edition would have scaled the partitions, but clonezilla has
copied them across the same size so that now Windows 7 Disk Manager
shows 633 GB of unpartitioned space, but that's not a problem. I can
work with that.

Thanks Parko and thanks everybody else.

 

[Doum]

Prescott <[email protected]> écrivait

Acronis WD edition would have scaled the partitions,

<snip>

But the scaled partitions are just suggestions from ATI, they can be
resized to your liking before proceeding with the cloning.

 

[Canuck57]

I couldn't find the CD with Acronis True Image WD Edition that I burned
before, so I burned another CD and booted from it. It still doesn't know
what to do with the 143.5 MB area that Windows 7 creates when it is
installed.

My comment was aimed at the OS, never have used Acronis so I don't know
it. But MS Windows OS utilities supplied by Microsoft, can't say I have
heard people having a success rate with them.

 

[Dave-UK]

My comment was aimed at the OS, never have used Acronis so I don't know
it. But MS Windows OS utilities supplied by Microsoft, can't say I have
heard people having a success rate with them.

I don't normally see your posts as I have you kill-filed due to your constant replies
to the other trolls on this newsgroup.
I have used Win7's disk image creation and recovery on several machines
and it works just fine. You don't need to buy any third party software.

 

[Roy Smith]

Well now that you do have your OS on the new drive you can expand the
partition. Just right click on Computer (either on the Desktop or in the
Start Menu) and select Manage. In the Computer Management window click on
Disk Management in the left pane. In the center pane right click on your C:
drive and select Extend Volume... and you can then specify how large you
want the partition to be.

 

[Roy Smith]

I don't normally see your posts as I have you kill-filed due to your
constant replies
to the other trolls on this newsgroup.
I have used Win7's disk image creation and recovery on several machines
and it works just fine. You don't need to buy any third party software.

Although there is one limitation to the supplied MS backup utility in Win 7
that I don't like. That is if you store your backup files on a networked
drive, it only saves the current disk image. Myself I would prefer to have
a full image along with incremental updates to that image like Acronis does.
That way I am able to restore my system to any date that I desire. But to
each his own... if you're satisfied with the way Win7's backup works, then
I'm happy for you...