Drive cloning

[Lewis]

I picked up one of those $80 2TB drives at Microcenter today and am
planning on replacing the old 500GB in the W7 machine with it.

What I would like to do is clone the current drive ont the new drive so
I don't have to reinstall anything.

I don't know if the Seagate green drives come with software (haven't
opened the drive yet) but thought I would ask here for recommendations
on what software to use to do this, and what procedure I might want to
follow.

I will probably wait until Wednesday to do this as I have a several hour
block of time available then.

 

[Char Jackson]

I picked up one of those $80 2TB drives at Microcenter today and am
planning on replacing the old 500GB in the W7 machine with it.

What I would like to do is clone the current drive ont the new drive so
I don't have to reinstall anything.

I don't know if the Seagate green drives come with software (haven't
opened the drive yet) but thought I would ask here for recommendations
on what software to use to do this, and what procedure I might want to
follow.

I will probably wait until Wednesday to do this as I have a several hour
block of time available then.

Did you see the similar thread from the other day, titled "Upgrading a
hard drive"?
Look for Message-ID: <[email protected]>

 

[SC Tom]

I picked up one of those $80 2TB drives at Microcenter today and am
planning on replacing the old 500GB in the W7 machine with it.

What I would like to do is clone the current drive ont the new drive so
I don't have to reinstall anything.

I don't know if the Seagate green drives come with software (haven't
opened the drive yet) but thought I would ask here for recommendations
on what software to use to do this, and what procedure I might want to
follow.

I will probably wait until Wednesday to do this as I have a several hour
block of time available then.

Seagate drives come with software called DiscWizard, which is basically a
watered down version of Acronis True Image.It will allow you to do exactly
what you are wanting to do, no problem. I use ATI Home 2010 to create
regular images of my drives, and have used those images a few times when
drives went bad to save my bacon. It also has the ability to clone to same
size or larger drives.
Check here for the latest version:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

 

[Lewis]

On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 01:44:27 +0000 (UTC), Lewis

Did you see the similar thread from the other day, titled "Upgrading a
hard drive"?

I glanced through it without paying particular attention since I wasn't
plannin on doing this until I saw the 2TB drive for $80. It appeared
that most drives come with SOME software, but whether that was the best
option or not, that I didn't notice.

Look for Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Will do.

How about something like hooking both drives up to a linux live CD boot
and running dd?

Since the 500GB boot drive is mostly full, speed is a consideration.

 

[Lewis]

In message <[email protected]>

Seagate drives come with software called DiscWizard, which is basically a
watered down version of Acronis True Image.It will allow you to do exactly
what you are wanting to do, no problem. I use ATI Home 2010 to create
regular images of my drives, and have used those images a few times when
drives went bad to save my bacon. It also has the ability to clone to same
size or larger drives.

OK, after looking at the other thread on this
(<[email protected]>) I think I am going to try
Reflect and see how that goes.

However, this does bring up one other question. When I had PATA drives I
knew how to tell which drive was the boot drive simply by how it was
connected to the PATA cable, but now with SATA I really have no idea.
The machine has 2x500GB drives and 1x1.5TB, so I only have two to choose
from. Is there anyway to tell which 500 is the boot? I didn't see
anything where Windows told me with SATA connection was used for which
drive, but I could have easily missed it not knowing where to look.

Worst case I guess wrong and have to redo it, I guess.

 

[choro]

I glanced through it without paying particular attention since I wasn't
plannin on doing this until I saw the 2TB drive for $80. It appeared
that most drives come with SOME software, but whether that was the best
option or not, that I didn't notice.


Will do.

How about something like hooking both drives up to a linux live CD boot
and running dd?

Just make sure you get a good hooker!

 

[Dex]

I glanced through it without paying particular attention since I wasn't
plannin on doing this until I saw the 2TB drive for $80. It appeared
that most drives come with SOME software, but whether that was the best
option or not, that I didn't notice.


Will do.

How about something like hooking both drives up to a linux live CD boot
and running dd?

Since the 500GB boot drive is mostly full, speed is a consideration.

If speed is a consideration you'd better check the RPM of the drive,
cheap[er] drives have a spindle speed of 5,400.

 

[choro]

I glanced through it without paying particular attention since I wasn't
plannin on doing this until I saw the 2TB drive for $80. It appeared
that most drives come with SOME software, but whether that was the best
option or not, that I didn't notice.


Will do.

How about something like hooking both drives up to a linux live CD boot
and running dd?

Since the 500GB boot drive is mostly full, speed is a consideration.

If speed is a consideration you'd better check the RPM of the drive,
cheap[er] drives have a spindle speed of 5,400.

But faster drives get 'ot, as the French would say!

The faster the rpm the 'otter the girl!

 

[Seth]

However, this does bring up one other question. When I had PATA drives I
knew how to tell which drive was the boot drive simply by how it was
connected to the PATA cable, but now with SATA I really have no idea.
The machine has 2x500GB drives and 1x1.5TB, so I only have two to choose
from. Is there anyway to tell which 500 is the boot? I didn't see
anything where Windows told me with SATA connection was used for which
drive, but I could have easily missed it not knowing where to look.

Just disconnect the drives not being cloned. Now you're left with your old
500gb and your new drive.

As for identifying which 500gb is your boot, most likely the one on the
lower numbered SATA port (they're numbered 0-whatever)

 

[SC Tom]

In message <[email protected]>


OK, after looking at the other thread on this
(<[email protected]>) I think I am going to try
Reflect and see how that goes.

However, this does bring up one other question. When I had PATA drives I
knew how to tell which drive was the boot drive simply by how it was
connected to the PATA cable, but now with SATA I really have no idea.
The machine has 2x500GB drives and 1x1.5TB, so I only have two to choose
from. Is there anyway to tell which 500 is the boot? I didn't see
anything where Windows told me with SATA connection was used for which
drive, but I could have easily missed it not knowing where to look.

Worst case I guess wrong and have to redo it, I guess.

There is no time limit on the Seagate DiscWizard software, if that was your
concern. I've never used Macrium Reflect, but it seems to be a good product
also.

Good question. I don't know of any way within Windows to tell the SATA port
number that is used per drive. Once you clone the drive, you have to go into
BIOS and tell it which drive is the boot drive (first to look at when
booting). Using ATI, I created the boot CD that allows me to use all of it's
functions from its own shell, so nothing is done from within Windows anyhow.
When the cloning process is done, I just shut it down, remove the old drive,
but up into BIOS, tell it which drive to use (when there are more than one
to choose from), save my settings, and let it go. The machine boots up and
you've got a drive with more space.
If you use a boot CD like that, you could remove all but your boot drive and
install only one of the new drives, then clone it. Then add the other drives
and do what you want with them- use them for data drives, format them,
whatever.
If you create images of your drives to an external drive before you start
this process, then you'll have an out if you screw one of the operations up
(not assuming you will, but Murphy's Law, you know).

 

[Lewis]

In message <[email protected]>

Just disconnect the drives not being cloned. Now you're left with your old
500gb and your new drive.

Yes, the issue is which drive.

As for identifying which 500gb is your boot, most likely the one on the
lower numbered SATA port (they're numbered 0-whatever)

Most likely? So the OS doesn’t tell you which sata port the drives are
on?

 

[Justin!!!]

I picked up one of those $80 2TB drives at Microcenter today and am
planning on replacing the old 500GB in the W7 machine with it.

What I would like to do is clone the current drive ont the new drive so
I don't have to reinstall anything.

I don't know if the Seagate green drives come with software (haven't
opened the drive yet) but thought I would ask here for recommendations
on what software to use to do this, and what procedure I might want to
follow.

I will probably wait until Wednesday to do this as I have a several hour
block of time available then.

Consider reinstalling everything onto the new drive.
I know it seems like a pain in the ass, but at some point it has to be
done anyway. Everyone knows that after a while Windows slows down and a
reformat is the best thing to do.
Might as well use this opportunity to do it.

 

[Ken Blake]

If speed is a consideration you'd better check the RPM of the drive,
cheap[er] drives have a spindle speed of 5,400.

Another thing to realize is that larger drives are generally faster
than smaller one. Because the larger drives are physically the same
size as the smaller ones, the tracks are closer to each other, and
therefore the heads have to travel a shorter distance to go from track
to track.

 

[ray]

I glanced through it without paying particular attention since I wasn't
plannin on doing this until I saw the 2TB drive for $80. It appeared
that most drives come with SOME software, but whether that was the best
option or not, that I didn't notice.


Will do.

How about something like hooking both drives up to a linux live CD boot
and running dd?

You'll run into some problems if the drives are not the same size. I have
used a Linux Live CD with a third drive to backup using partimage and
then restoring (did that when I replaced the hard drive in my laptop for
a larger one). The partitions, then, are intact and ready to go. With
partimage you can also backup and restore over the net.

 

[SC Tom]

Just disconnect the drives not being cloned. Now you're left with your
old 500gb and your new drive.

As for identifying which 500gb is your boot, most likely the one on the
lower numbered SATA port (they're numbered 0-whatever)

Unfortunately, that's not always true. I have 2 SATA HDD and 1 SATA DVD in
my system and they are all located at "Location 0(0)" in Device Manager. The
only way to tell the difference in the hard drives is that they are
different sizes.

 

[Seth]

Unfortunately, that's not always true. I have 2 SATA HDD and 1 SATA DVD in
my system and they are all located at "Location 0(0)" in Device Manager.
The only way to tell the difference in the hard drives is that they are
different sizes.

They're not all physically connected to SATA-0 on your motherboard, are
they?

 

[Seth]

In message <[email protected]>



Yes, the issue is which drive.


Most likely? So the OS doesn’t tell you which sata port the drives are
on?

Not always properly identified by the OS (as you'll see from SC Tom's post).
But if you're opening the box up to unplug the drives not being
accessed\cloned in question the motherboard will be marked SATA-0, SATA-1,
etc or something to that effect. USUALLY the boot drive is the lowest
number (but not always). Unplug all but that (remembering what went where)
and see if the machine still boots. Process of elimination if all else
fails.

 

[Seth]

They're not all physically connected to SATA-0 on your motherboard, are
they?

Ack, hit send before done...

The question above was rhetorical as I've never seen being able to hook them
all up to a single SATA port.

But the "Location 0(0)" is a logical designation, not physical. How it is
assigned varies from system to system, I suspect differentiated by the
driver set. On my system, using a RAID volume, my location is simply
"Location 0". Yours, with the 2 numerical designators is probably a
Port\LUN designator which still doesn't correlate the way we logically think
it should but that's how the host adapter (they're all on the same "chipset"
probably, right?) presents it. If your motherboard has multiple chipsets
for the host adapter(s) and you had some devices on one and some on the
other, the :location" designators would be shown differently within
Windows.

 

[SC Tom]

They're not all physically connected to SATA-0 on your motherboard, are
they?

Three different cables to three different ports. They're labeled on the MB
as SATA1 through 4, and are detected in BIOS the same, 1 through 4.
I should mention this is an XP SP3 box, but I wouldn't think that 7 would
see it any differently (and BIOS certainly wouldn't). My Win7 notebook sees
the SATA drive as just Location 0, but there is only the one hard drive in
it.

 

[Seth]

Three different cables to three different ports. They're labeled on the MB
as SATA1 through 4, and are detected in BIOS the same, 1 through 4.
I should mention this is an XP SP3 box, but I wouldn't think that 7 would
see it any differently (and BIOS certainly wouldn't). My Win7 notebook
sees the SATA drive as just Location 0, but there is only the one hard
drive in it.

See my follow-up (post above I hit send before ready) but to summarize, how
it shows up in device manager and/or disk manager will be dependent on the
drivers for the host adapter. What you see within Windows is virtualized by
the host adapter and not representative of physical ports as you've just
verified above.

To my original post, as what you just wrote above, each drive is on a
different port so the OP can just unplug the unused drives. The boot drive,
again as I said earlier, is usually the one on the lowest numbered port. In
your case, "probably" SATA1.