Clone Hard Disk Windows 7
Haldis Rucci
Whether you've just picked up one of the best external hard drives or have gone for an internal drive after figuring out the victor between SSD vs HDD, cloning a hard drive isn't as daunting as you may think it is.
Software: although Windows contains a whole load of handy tools, especially in its latest iteration, Windows 11, a drive cloning utility isn't one of them. Fortunately, there's a plethora of useful and free apps that do the job effectively.
The software we would recommend using when cloning drives is Macrium Reflect Free, which, as its name suggests, doesn't cost a cent. This app offers all the basic functionality you'll need if your goal is to simply clone one hard drive to another, though there are a number of paid apps with more advanced features such as quicker cloning speeds, including O&O DiskImage and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
1. The first step is to ensure you have your new disk or drive installed in or connected to your computer. You can find out how to install and connect your drive using the manufacturer's instructions. If you're having problems seeing your drive, make sure you check out our troubleshooting guide on how to fix an external hard drive that won't show up.
5. If the drive you're cloning has partitions, it's recommended to clone every partition without compressing anything. To do this, click Copy Partitions then Exact partition offset and length.
Note: if the drive you're cloning to is smaller than the drive you're cloning from, you'll need to either deselect partitions or allow the app to compress your partitions. This may result in issues if you're cloning your main drive containing your operating system, so you may want to consider getting a larger drive to clone to if this is the case.
8. You'll now see confirmation of the process that's about to take place. Once you've read through and are happy with the information here, click Finish to head to the next step.
9. You'll now see a final confirmation page. Make sure both of the first two boxes are checked. The second box simply saves the configuration of the process to your computer, in case you want to run it again in the future. This will take up practically no space on your computer, so it won't do any harm to save it in case.
10. You'll now see a pop-up which warns you that the data on the destination drive will be overwritten. If you're OK with this, check the box then click Continue. Now the magic will finally begin.
The process will take a while if your original drive contains a lot of data. It's best to not use your PC while it completes the process, since cloning a drive can be quite intensive, though you should keep an eye on it in case any errors occur. Of course, you need to make sure your PC remains powered on, and that both of your drives remain connected.
Now you're good to go, check out some other Windows guides, including how to change the Windows 11 Start menu back to Windows 10, how to install Android apps on Windows 11 and how to enable clipboard history on Windows.
Dale Fox is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He's been a tech nerd ever since childhood, when he used the money from his first job as a paperboy to buy a subscription to GamesMaster magazine. Dale was previously a presenter and editor in China, where he also worked as a copywriter for OnePlus at its Shenzhen HQ. "}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Dale FoxSocial Links NavigationFreelance JournalistDale Fox is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He's been a tech nerd ever since childhood, when he used the money from his first job as a paperboy to buy a subscription to GamesMaster magazine. Dale was previously a presenter and editor in China, where he also worked as a copywriter for OnePlus at its Shenzhen HQ.
The problem is, I want to clone the complete drive (including the apps, OSes, files and everything, verbatim) to another drive. I know there would be some crazy software activation issues, like Windows Not Genuine problem and so on. But I wonder whether is there a tool powerful enough to do the cloning and at the same time maintain the OS and apps?
Acronis True Image Home 2011 assures that all your important data, including photos, videos, music, documents and applications, are fully protected and can be recovered quickly in the event of any disaster.
Create a clone of your harddrive, use the Rescue CD to copy the backup to a new drive.Everything will be copied 1:1. Most programs really just give you a hard time with the licenses if you change multiple aspects of your hardware at once.
Cygwin is one of the solutions - if you want to do that from inside the backed up system. There are dd and pv commands which would help you. Also you can use live CD/DVD of unix-like system and then also compress the image. But you also have some trash from the disk (deleted files) in the backup.
In gparted loaded (bootable USB) shrink the right most partitions, i.e. Linux partitions when Dual Boot (internal old) unit. If you have Windows, it is not recommended to move the C: partition (start) to the left, or if you do, try using a Windows bootable USB to accomplish that, instead of gparted.
Try restarting your PC as usual (just to check), but before: If you use Linux (HDD) or if your system does not start correctly, use boot-repair (same bootable USB), to fix the modified Linux partitions, specially in a Dual Boot in which Windows is to the left, and you moved Linux to the left or shrank it (old drive).
I tried a lot of things with no success, so I wonder what I am doing wrong?!
What could I do to successfully clone my Win XP partition to replace the original disk by a larger one which is bootable.
I would try, deleting mounted devices in windows registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices, since you're moving windows to another partition. Then editing partition number in boot.ini partition(2). And finally setting partition as Active (add boot flag) and using fixmbr or install grub and add to menu.1st, something like this:title windows xp rootnoverify (hd0,2)chainloader +1
First of all, I have used Clonezilla, it is a great tool to clone disks and partitions;I suggest you to get Parted Magic it's a bootable CD full of many useful tools for diagnosis and maintenance, including Clonezilla.
Clonezilla itself has many different options that let you choose, amongst other things, if you want to create the partitions manually, if you want the new partitions to match exactly the sources, of if you want to proportionally resize them in case (like yours) the destination disk is larger that the source.
I also had a 250 GB disk as source and a 500 GB as destination. Well, I tried many times and the only one solution that worked for me was to clone EXACTLY from the source, ending with half of the new disk as unused space; then I resized the existing partitions and created new ones according to my needs. It requires a longer time if compared to other methods, but it's the only one that let me boot Windows correctly.
As a final tip, if you plan on making Linux your primary OS (but it's a general rule that always works), you may consider to create two different partitions for it, one as the main installation (where the root / will be located) and another where you will place your Home folder (its path will be /home/yourname); as you probably already know, this folder contains all you personal files and all the program setting and customizations, so having a different partition for it (that will be automatically mounted at boot, you don't have to worry about anything) will keep all this data safe when you want to upgrade your distro.
Cloning a hard drive means creating an identical, one-to-one, fully bootable copy of the original drive. Learn how to clone your hard drive to back up valuable data, migrate to a new computer, or upgrade to a solid-state drive. But before you clone your disk, use specialized optimization software to make your transfer as clean and smooth as possible.
After downloading Macrium Reflect, run the setup wizard to install it. Note that it comes bundled with other software. Deselect the first two options during custom setup if you only want to install Reflect.
Select Create Backups > Local Disks. These options are already the default upon booting Macrium Reflect for the first time. Choose the hard drive you want to clone and click Clone this disk.
You can also enter Advanced Startup mode on Windows 10 or 11 by holding Shift while pressing the Restart button. Press Start > Power. Then, hold the Shift key and press Restart. Keep holding shift as your computer boots up, which will take you to the Advanced Startup screen.
On the Advanced Startup Screen, click Troubleshoot > Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings > Restart. After your computer reboots once more, press the appropriate key from the menu to enter the BIOS/UEFI. Some computers will boot into the BIOS automatically.
To avoid copying gigabytes of unnecessary files, broken registry items, duplicate photos, programs you no longer need, and more, you should clean your Mac before cloning. You can do it manually, but the cleaning process will be much faster, easier, and more thorough with a dedicated tool such as AVG TuneUp for Mac.
In Disk Utility, select your external hard drive in the sidebar and click Restore. Then, click the Restore pop-up menu, choose the disk drive you want to copy, and click Restore again.
Select the cloned drive from the available startup disks, then click Continue on a Mac with Apple Silicon, or the up arrow on a Mac with Intel. The next time you restart your Mac, it will boot up from the disk you selected. You can test if your cloned drive works properly by booting your computer from it.
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