Cloning a Hard Drive
I used EASEUS Todo Backup Home 2.5 (which can also clone hard drives/partitions) to clone my hard drive partition which had the OS installed on it, to an external hard drive.
Now ive got rid of the original hard drive and bought a bigger one and wish to use that clone from the external hard drive to this new hard drive which is inside the computer. But how do i do it?
Ive tried copy and pasting all the files, the system wont boot from it. Ive also tried taking the hard drive out of the external caddy and putting it into the computer and booting from there, but it wont work either. Ive also attached then used the same software to clone the clone to the drive i want to boot off, and it clones it ok, but it still wont boot from it.
How do these cloning hard drives work? Whats the point of them if you cannot use them in the way of the original.
I usually have dual boot, XP and Windows 7 and at the moment have freshly installed XP and spent 2 hours customising, installing apps, favourites etc and also wish to clone it how it is right now (incase of future crashes/HD failures etc), but if i cannot simply put the cloned data on a hard drive of my choice and stick it in my computer to boot off, then theres no point cloning it and wasting that space either i dont think.
So am i doing it wrong? Is there a better/different way/software to use?
All Comments (20)
Jump to unread Post a Commentmy suggestion would be to put your original hdd back in, and make a clone to the 'bigger one' then try to boot with that
also, if it is windows 7 make sure you clone the 100mb partition as well
Edited By: jayjayuk1234 on May 20, 2011 00:42
Now ive installed XP on the new hard drive, and from the XP im running the Easeus software and using the clone on the external hard drive (partition 2-win7) to clone a copy of it to my current drive (on an empty partition ive created), so my new hard drive should have 2 bootable OS on it. One that boots fine (XP) and the second, Windows 7, that ive cloned back onto the hard disk.
Hope this all makes sense.
seagate and others provide free software u can download from their website to do this with. the seagate one is called seagate diskwizard, its a customised version of acronis.
In disk management, right click on your main partition and select "Mark partition as active" you'll get a warning message, just click ok and restart.
Edited By: lilraul on May 20, 2011 02:55
Not wanting to thread hijack, but will this clones everything from the 3 partitions of my laptop onto a external 2.5 in a caddy so I can then just swap the drives over ?
Not wanting to thread hijack, but will this clones everything from the 3 partitions of my laptop onto a external 2.5 in a caddy so I can then just swap the drives over ?
I've cloned drives with several partitions with this just as you describe, ie from 250GB to 500GB
In disk management, right click on your main partition and select "Mark partition as active" you'll get a warning message, just click ok and restart.
I dont get any such option. All i get is: open, explore, change drive letter and paths, format, delete logical drive..., properties and help :(
booting from win7 cd you will get the option to repair computer, the startup repair will write all systems files to the hdd but it will not make a partition active you will have to do that manually using a command call diskpart.
not sure how its going to react to a winxp partition on there at the mo so what state is the system in now?
another thing u need to be careful of here is any extra hdds installed, sometimes win7 will right the system files to them leaving you unable to boot if the drive fails., who many hdds are in there now?
Edited By: maddogb on May 20, 2011 15:05
In disk management, right click on your main partition and select "Mark partition as active" you'll get a warning message, just click ok and restart.
I dont get any such option. All i get is: open, explore, change drive letter and paths, format, delete logical drive..., properties and help :(
Usually if "mark partition as active" is greyed out then it is already active.
booting from win7 cd you will get the option to repair computer, the startup repair will write all systems files to the hdd but it will not make a partition active you will have to do that manually using a command call diskpart.
not sure how its going to react to a winxp partition on there at the mo so what state is the system in now?
another thing u need to be careful of here is any extra hdds installed, sometimes win7 will right the system files to them leaving you unable to boot if the drive fails., who many hdds are in there now?
Ive disconnected all other drives for the moment, while im experimenting, so i cannot accidentally mess up storage files. I tried cloning XP to an external sata this time and when the partition was cloned, i disconnected the internal and tried to boot from the newly created external clone, and it still did not boot, so now ive uninstalled Easeus and have moved onto Acronis true image software and am trying to figure out how that works. Looks like i can clone an entire disk (1tb) but not a partition, so thats not an option.
BOOTCFG /rebuild
booting from win7 cd you will get the option to repair computer, the startup repair will write all systems files to the hdd but it will not make a partition active you will have to do that manually using a command call diskpart.
not sure how its going to react to a winxp partition on there at the mo so what state is the system in now?
another thing u need to be careful of here is any extra hdds installed, sometimes win7 will right the system files to them leaving you unable to boot if the drive fails., who many hdds are in there now?
Ive disconnected all other drives for the moment, while im experimenting, so i cannot accidentally mess up storage files. I tried cloning XP to an external sata this time and when the partition was cloned, i disconnected the internal and tried to boot from the newly created external clone, and it still did not boot, so now ive uninstalled Easeus and have moved onto Acronis true image software and am trying to figure out how that works. Looks like i can clone an entire disk (1tb) but not a partition, so thats not an option.
haven't got any versions of that installed at the moment but fwir you clone the hdd to an image then you can restore just partitions.