[daniel1212]

Switching from a mechanical hard drive to a SSD for your OS is the cheapest way to increase speed (and or add storage), and right now, partly due to the exchange rate I think, the price of SSDs are about half of what they were about a year ago, so that a 120GB one can be bought for uinder $20 and a 240GB for under $30, thank God. id="isPasted">

 

I have used 1_AOMEI_Backupper_Standard, Macrium and MiniTool ShadowMaker, and all work fine.

I way i do it is to format and name a new drive first. In most modern computers, the BIOS (on reboot,and tap the key it says to access setup, such as F2, Del,. Esc) will enable hot plugging, meaning you can plug in a drive while the OS is running and the drive will show up in Windows File Explorer (press Windows key and tap e), where you can right click on a new drive and format it and give it a name. Or you can shutdown the computer, connect the new drive and boot up and find it to do so.

Note however, that at least on my computer, even if I unplug a non-OS drive then it will still show up in File Explorer and Device Manager.

Since I have more than one drive, to avoid confusion when cloning, I shutdown and unplug any other drives except the one with the OS on it, and the new drive (and it should be at least 120GB)

Next, in File Explorer, note the name of the main drive (C) as well as the new one. . Then launch the cloning software, and make sure you have the main drive as the source, with its partitions, and clone that to the new drive.

Then shut down when done, and unplug the old drive and plug the data and power cable from that one into the new drive you just cloned the OS to, and boot from that.

If that works fine, then you can connect the old drive as a spare but make sure in your BIOS that the PC does not boot from that. Note that most BIOS tapping one of the F keys (like F10,11,12) when the PC reboots will provide you with a list of drives to boot from. You should then delete the Windows folder, but back up your OS to another drive. At the cost of SSDs now then that is a relatively inexpensive option.

 
Right now I am downloading the   https://www.sermonindex.net/ site, which they offer.

 

For more on how, this may help https://www.diskpart.com/clone/os-cloning-software-7201.html

 

Thank God for such tools, but I hope we only use them for what is good in God's eyes.

[daniel1212]

Lowest: LEVEN JS300 SSD 240GB 3D NAND SATA III Internal Solid State Drive - 6 Gb/s, 2.5 inch /7mm (0.28") - up to 550MB/s 4.5 2,976 ratings $15.99 Only 11 left in stock

[Still Thinking]

I like an external 2-bay dock with cloning capability. I clone a lot of drives other than my primary. One odd thing. It used to take about 5-10 minutes to clone a 240-256GB SATA III SSD, now some of them are taking almost an hour, and I have no idea why.

[MCSETots]

Any recommendations for Hillary’s server, Huma/Anthony’s laptop, Hunter’s laptop and voting machines . . .

[bitt]

p

[ShadowAce]

[TomGuy]

I recently came across Hasloe Backup Suite. I used it to image my main drive.

https://www.hasleo.com

[Dr. Sivana]

Ping

[algore]

I dont understand. If using a windows platform

Why not use winpe and dism?

Free is good

[Bob434]

[[so that a 120GB one can be bought for under $20 and a 240GB for under $30, ]]

2 terabyte is about min now if one does gaming and photos and such- and run a dual boot- i have a 1 terabyte- and am running out of room-

[zeugma]

Disk cloning made easy, the Linux way

#dd if=/dev/sda1 of /dev/sda2

[JustaTech]

The system I recently built has two NVME drive slots on the mobo, which I filled with Corsair 1 TB drives. I use the “prime” one as my boot/Windows drive, and the other one is maintained as an exact clone of the boot drive. I use the paid version of Macrium Reflect and have had no issues other than I wish it did a better job of displaying the Windows labels for the drives.

If the prime drive fails to boot the next one in BIOS boot order is the clone.

This system is so far the quickest and most stable I’ve ever built. It’s a ROG Strix X570E with a Ryzen 5700G APU, and no GPU for the moment. Lian Li case, Corsair mechanical keyboard, HP 34” curved monitor, and a Be Quiet 1 KW power supply. Windows 11 Pro. So far absolutely bulletproof other than the usual Windows crap.

[Varmint Al]

CloneZilla all the way. It is very easy to use. All one has to do is read the instructions. I have been using it with Linux and Windows Hard drives. It is only difficult if you try to clone to a smaller HD. Burn it to a USB stick and boot from it and it works fine. Here is the link to the download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla/

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[RandallFlagg]

My HDD C drive has been going strong since I built my gaming rig back in 2011, but it’s showing it’s age.
I thought that if I got one of those dock things (Plugs an HDD next to a SSD) it would do it all for you. Something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/10Gbps-Standalone-Duplicator-Dock-SATA/dp/B019Y4JE22/ref=sr_1_4?crid=37FTXJXVQ3P3M&keywords=hdd+to+ssd+clone+kit&qid=1668651321&sprefix=HDD+to+SSD%2Caps%2C105&sr=8-4

Wouldn’t this be all I’d need?