need help with disk cloning

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
G

grither

Distinguished
Mar 24, 2009
80
0
18,630
I have a 2tb disk i will call hitachi which has two partitions (e and f). this drive is showing signs of potentially failing, so i want to remove it but replace it with a 3tb drive.

e and f have a ton of programs installed (my OS disk is a ssd so its small, therefore i use E and F for all my games, progs, storage etc)

what i really want to do is make an exact replica from the hitachi onto my new disk (seagate), and remove the hitachi but have windows 'think and feel' that E and F are on the seagate

i tried using EaseUS Todo backup for this, but may have selected the wrong options because it created partitions A and B on this disk... so if i remove hitachi i think windows won't know all my programs are on A and B because it thinks they are on E and F

I think years ago i cloned my c drive, through a prog called clonezilla which worked well? it was linux based on i had to boot to that before windows to do the clone. the EaseUS program worked right from windows, and i wonder if that's my problem

any advice?
 
Solution
Hawkeye22
Once you have the new drive renamed to e & f, putting your old drive in should cause the OS to assign new drive letters to it. If it doesn't, you can go into disk management and give them new letters such as j & k. Once they have drive letters, they will show up properly in windows and you can copy files to/from that drive. When you are comfortable, you can then use disk management to format the old drive. If you don't want two volumes, you can use disk management to delete all partitions on the old drive, create one large partition, then format it.
Sort by date Sort by votes
G

grither

Distinguished
Mar 24, 2009
80
0
18,630


ok i see... i can try that, i think that the cloning worked properly

so then i have a follow up question- once i change the letters from a/b to e/f, and test that things appear to be working, how can i then add back the original drive for purposes of formatting? in other words, once the new drive is e/f, won't putting the old drive also look like e/f?

i do want to use the old drive for a 'one time' backup of some info to just put on a shelf in the event of a big failure...but i need to format it first! not sure how to format it when there's already a working clone of it in the same machine. i realize formating it in a different machine would probably be easiest but i don't really have access to that.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

Glorious
Feb 10, 2006
11,442
1
49,065
Once you have the new drive renamed to e & f, putting your old drive in should cause the OS to assign new drive letters to it. If it doesn't, you can go into disk management and give them new letters such as j & k. Once they have drive letters, they will show up properly in windows and you can copy files to/from that drive. When you are comfortable, you can then use disk management to format the old drive. If you don't want two volumes, you can use disk management to delete all partitions on the old drive, create one large partition, then format it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom