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Best way to clone HDD's


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So i have been working as "the it guy" at a place for a while.

My primary experience has just been with managing servers, desktop support, etc...

However, something simple like this has my panties in a bunch.

I have a bunch of older computers that have incredibly small hard drives...

Over time they have packed themselves so full that there really isnt anything else left to delete.

I figured i would use something like clonezilla for the actual cloning, thats not really the issue.

The issue is that most of these computers only have connections for 1 HD on the mobo,

How would you go about doing this?

I figured get an external HDD enclosure and do it that way. Like i said before, i have never had to do this, so im not too sure what type of enclosure i should get. Most of the older HD's have IDE connections, but i would also like to be able to clone SATA drives.

Nate, im looking for you on this one

But i will take the advice from anyone!

Thanks guys

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There are a few different ways to do it. The easiest and cheapest way is to just pop the new drive in an external enclosure and plug it into the host computer and copy the contents that way. I use Voom's in my company which allows you to clone HDD's they are typically used to image client drives that we need to forensically collect from but I have used them to clone HDD's of some of our PC's or Laptops. Or you could use software found online to do the same.

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Thanks man.

Is there any particular brand of external enclosure that you recommend?

I wasn't sure if something with a USB interface would be good enough for cloning a drive, but apparently its good enough.

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18" nightshade v1

DC audio 175.4

RF power T162s up front, infinity 3 way 6x9's in the back (removing rear stage and re-doing doors soon)

3x XS power D2700's

Knukonceptz 0awg all around

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Thanks man.

Is there any particular brand of external enclosure that you recommend?

I wasn't sure if something with a USB interface would be good enough for cloning a drive, but apparently its good enough.

I usually buy the cheapies off ebay lol the one I have now is a brand called simpletech IIRC. I bought their 3.5" HDD enclosure works great externally powered no complaints for $12 bucks.

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The problem you will have with just copy/pasting from one drive to another is

A. If your using windows it may not copy all the system files.

B. It may not copy drive parameters and boot sectors properly

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On 8/8/2012 at 4:50 PM, Brandon15zzz said:

I heard he actually graduated college with a 4.0 gpa. Seems pretty gangster.

On 8/29/2012 at 12:25 AM, ILoveBass21 said:

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Creating a ghost image if you have the capabilities would be a better solution

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On 8/8/2012 at 4:50 PM, Brandon15zzz said:

I heard he actually graduated college with a 4.0 gpa. Seems pretty gangster.

On 8/29/2012 at 12:25 AM, ILoveBass21 said:

he could blow a sub powering it with a potato.

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  1. Remove older HDD
  2. Put new large drive into the computer
  3. Reimage with fresh operating system
  4. Install applications
  5. USB Slave the old drive to the new system and copy needed data.

NEXT

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^ if you have to do that on over 10 computers, that would take FOREVER. Norton Ghost has a clone mode, seagate and maxtor also provide disk cloning tools for free, and Acronis will also clone drives. Just make sure they're NTFS or you may have issues with resizing the partitions.

When I get a drive at work with drive errors, I will run a chkdsk on it, then clone it to a new drive then chkdsk it again just to make sure (its still faster than rebuilding the PC from scratch). it should also speed up the PC about 1/3 in my experiance due to newer drives being faster. If the drives are IDE you can get cheap (10$) USB connections, assuming the machines are newer than P4's the USB should detect it in the bios allowing you to clone it.

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Like beaker said i use the maxtor max blast and western digital acronis true image to clone and backup my drives. The maxtor maxblast is a free download as with the acronis true image but there is a catch. To use maxtor maxblast you MUST have at least one seagate or maxtor hard drive connected to the system for it to allow the program to run. For the western digital you need at least one western digital drive connected to the system for it to allow the program to run. Now these both are the same program of acronis true image however the program has limitations as opposed to if you went online and bought just the acronis true image software yourself but it will work just fine.

As for without any software you can use what is built into DOS itself by using xcopy however xcopy takes FOREVER to run and you need to setup the partitions correctly and match everything up yourself where the acronis software does it all for you.

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