Last time I tried cloning a drive it failed miserably and I was stuck doing everything manually and took forever
CloneZilla has worked well for me in the past
Is it free?
Why don’t you Google that?
I’d rather AskLemmy
You are asking the best way to do something, they are replying the best way to do something. Sometimes with technology you need to actually learn something.
I’d rather AskLemmy
This
CloneZilla. Command line scary? RescueZilla. Both free, easy to use, and I use them in an enterprise business and have for many years if you want some proof they’re safe and reliable.
Quick note: If it’s your OS drive: Clone it. Shut down. Disconnect source drive before turning back on or you’ll have boot issues and be scratching your head why.
Yeah it’s my OS drive
Another vote for clonezilla. I’ve used it 20+ times for this exact thing. One tip: you might want to chkdsk your drive from windows before you clone it. I’ve had that screw up the copy a few times.
The CloneZilla website has a good walkthrough for doing a Disk to Disk image using their tools.
Macrium reflect free addition.
Tried that, didn’t work. It fucked up my data
That’s rare.
Perhaps use ddrescue on a mint or Ubuntu live cd / usb. It’ll duplicate the drive bit for bit.
Or if you don’t want to learn this stuff, buy a Samsung SSD and use Samsung’s free but temperamental cloning app
Sorry to hear that. It’s my go to.
Clonezilla. If you don’t know how to use it, it’s a good time To learn 👍
Samsung Data Migration if you’re using a Samsung drive.
I bought a cloner. It’s not free, but it has paid it’s investment many times when I’ve had to copy a whole drive that’s close to being dead or basically wanting to up size my SSD/HDD without losing anything.
This is the one I got: https://a.co/d/0R57miy
I own one of these, is there a chance this can fuck up?
Hasn’t fucked up for me. Plus if it fucks up, the source drive is left alone and your target drive is what is being written on. All it’s doing for source drive is reading it.
Once you get to the bigger drive you can either make the extra space part of that drive or partition it as a separate drive. It’s your choice after that.
Probably not the most popular opinion but back in the day Minitool Partition Wizard was really good. Up until version 9.1 it was awesome. So if you can find yourself a copy of v9.1, you’ll be able to clone the drive. It was freeware at the time.
Try using a specialized software like rsync (on Linux, idk if it is available on windows too)
I’m on windows
Robocopy
It’s built into windows and very handy
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy
But it won’t clone the volume, it’ll just make a copy of the data, all the partition tables etc will be left behind.
Oh yeah good point. I was still sleepy when I commented and thought OP just wanted to copy the data
What are you missing from simple file copying?
Doesn’t doing it that way not preserve the same drive letters etc so programs will be fucked up? My os is on my ssd for the record
You can change drive letters. So you could copy, then swap the drive letters between partitions.
But for the OS it’s not so simple - at least for Windows. Specifically because of the Windows registry and hidden profile data and Windows activation.
By that point I’d consider a file copy, registry backup (for selective restore; but may not be worth it), and reinstall Windows on the new partition. Trying to clone-move in a working way is a hassle and error-prone. I’d consider ensuring getting the Windows license over much easier. (A documented workflow by Microsoft.)
Loss of registry means many things may have to be reinstalled and reactivated, but I’d still prefer that.
FTK Imager should have you covered. You might need to do partitioning resizing on the destination though.
Honestly, just reinstall a clean copy of windows on the new drive and spend the time re-applying all your settings. I know it sucks but you’ll have less issues that way. It’s worth it.
Edit: typo
Voean?
They meant to type „clean“.
Thanks for the call out. I meant clean. I fixed it!
Plug both disks into your PC. Then use a gparted boot disk. There you can clone the partitions and then grow your primary partition on the new disk.
I’ve been using this method for years without problems.
Idk what a gparted boot disk is
Google it.
Gparted is a partition editor. They provide it as a bootable iso. They have instructions on how to put that on a USB drive and make it bootable.
You would boot gparted from usb, not windows, to do the work.
But seriously, Google it.
If you have a spare third drive (even an external drive) you can drop data onto, you could use Veeam free agent for Windows to back up the whole drive. It will talk you through making the recovery media (usb stick).
Acronis True Image is my preferred imaging software which can clone drives directly, but it costs money if you don’t sail the high seas.
I think the easiest route would be to just use the built in windows disk image tool? MS have increasingly hidden it over the years but it still works. Basically you take an image of your current system, then remove the old HDD, install the new one, restore the image. It does require having enough space on a spare disk to create the image.
This guide looks to cover creating an image:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-10/84fa6683-e3ac-4e93-9139-368af9267869
and this one covers restoring it: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-restore-a-windows-10-system-image-to-an/e20992ca-5641-4f7c-bb09-3895d0732162Edit: You can of course keep and reuse the old HDD. I just suggest pulling it for the initial restore if you aren’t comfortable with boot settings/wiping disks etc as you might just keep booting to the old existing windows. Once the new one is setup you can then connect the old one and format it.
