Posted on 05/02/2017 11:02:09 AM PDT by Allen In Texas Hill Country
I want to clone the master (C:) drive, segment for segment, so that I can install the duplicate drive in another system and it will boot. See some packages but thought I'd pass it by here too. Kinda low level stuff, any suggestions?
Yup- I’ve done several clones with macrium while windows was running- an it’s worked flawlessly-
Good thread. Subscribing.
Wow! Am I glad I asked. Guess I was headed in the wrong direction. I’ll be ordering a new drive today and try/use Macrium. I’ve got two desktops, this one for internet, email and money operations and a development machine. The drive in the development machine failed. Wasn’t too happy about that but figured I wanted a solid recovery system for the daily machine.
After I get the main drive cloned I’ll go back and maybe finishing recovering the development/build machine. On it I did my C++ compiling but have not been able to get a functional C++ environment. Maybe I’ll start a thread here if there are still any C++ people or on another C++ site.
Again, thanks for the help.
It is free. Not sure on the windows VM image, but I think it does.
hows about cloning my hard drive intact to a bigger drive?
tried a few, but they didn’t seem to create a new bootable drive?
just popping my head up for a quick question
when you get your development machine reinstalled with new drive, fresh install of os, tweaks done, os updated, drivers on etc- buy another HD and clone the new set up to the newest drive and have as a backup- I’ve always got a new drive ready to just pop in with everything on it, updated, all my programs installed, tweaked- etc- ten I’ll buy another drive and clone it as well to have on standby- saves tons and tons of work and hours- I’ve also got the clone file on an external drive as a further precaution- takes up a bit of room- but worth it-
You can run weekly clones- but i prefer to clone a drive when it’s as fresh as possible- with just the very basic updates and such done- to try to avoid any possible viruses from too much online activity and whatnot- Sure, I’ll lose some of the recent updates or changes I’ve made by putting in new drive that was clones a year prior or thereabouts-, but it’s still much better reinstall from scratch again- and most of my programs and tweaks are on and ready to go-
May I suggest you look into doing your development in a VM. I actually run my development environment from a USB3 External drive. Runs as fast as internal drives. Makes cloning easy peasy. Also means I am not tied to a machine. I can go to a client, pull the drive out of my pocket. Install VMWare player on their system, and bang. Up and running. No muss no fuss. My native environment and every tool I use. I run Linux, but develop for Windoze. The Linux OS is so efficient my compiles take less time than if I ran on the same machine natively.
I use Clonezilla on a USB thumb drive to boot and backup to another usb drive, then you can burn it to ANY hard Drive, and yes it does not copy Blank Space so how ever much space your drive uses, that is how big the image will be.
On there you’ll find every tool imaginable, including half a dozen cloners.
It has saved my bacon on several occasions.
Yep- it should do so- Are you sure you are cloning sector for sector? Raw clone? Raw clone is creating a new drive that is exactly the same as the old one- everything is intact- and bootable
But remember, you can only really clone to same size disk or one that it larger- not smaller- I tried going to smaller drives but couldn’t get it to work with programs that claimed it would work- I never got it to work
Acronis is the way to go.
the other problem when cloning to a new computer is that windows complains if the hardware is different- the identifying numbers don’t match- might render the os unusable- might have to purchase a new serial key for windows for the new computer-
All these issues go away when you run a VM. Run Linux as the primary OS. Run windows as a VM inside the Linux system. It becomes portable. Run it under Mac OSX. Run it under another Windoze system, Run it under Linux. It is a honey badger. It doesn’t give a sh!t. It runs. No problems.
I use Macrium at home & work - for non-encrypted drives.
To do a sector-by-sector copy of an encrypted drive I use Ubuntu live. Here is a little primer:
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19141/clone-a-hard-drive-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/
[[Run Linux as the primary OS. Run windows as a VM inside the Linux system.]]
I actually do- i also run windows 7 in dual boot mode- my linus is for every day Internet work- my windows 7 dual boot is for photoshop and windows only games- and not allowed to connect to Internet- and i run windows 10 in a vm inside linux- for quick photoshop edits without having to reboot- I don’t allow the vm to access Internet either=-
I love being able to do ‘snapshots’ in virtual box- super easy backup- and very fast- and allows me to experiment in windows 10 without worrying about messing it up- I can just very quickly reinstall the snapshot of anything happens- easy peasey
FYI
Not an easy process but it works (worked). One of the many reasons I have dumped MS and am using Linux Mint exclusively. Except for where I work.
Yep- i don’t even hardly ever use windows anymore- just for my photography and photoshop really- and windows only games- i do everything else on linux mint cinnamon- super easy and comfortable to use- and even if i have to reinstall it- it’s really quick to do, and quick to do all the tweaks I like on it- up and running in about 1-2 hours (lots of little things like email, settings, a few programs i use like mouse gestures etc-) Windows reinstall takes days with the slow as molasses windows updates, running down drivers, securing windows etc- Just too much hassle really- thats’ where the clone comes in handy-
When they give you the number to enter- will your old serial number for windows still work? I assume you’ll still have to re-input the serial number after they re-activate you computer? I’ve never run into a problem like that before- always just imaged to a hard-drive and put HD right back in the same computer-
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