Migrating/cloning OS and all data from laptop's dying hard drive to replacement... Reassurances needed!

franciskimberley

Reputable
Mar 22, 2014
9
0
4,510
Hi All

My trusty laptop's 250GB hard drive is on its way out so bought a 500GB replacement. Have a lot of audio software on it which, thanks to tedious installation/authorising procedures, means I'll be cloning the entire Win7 OS and data rather than going for a clean install. Have got a copy of a Paragon Drive Copy Professional 15 so should be a fairly straightforward procedure (I hope). Can someone just check over my itinerary and point out any flaws and potential problems?

As there can only be one laptop hard drive plugged into the mobo at one time I'll:

1) Back up all life-critical data from outgoing hard drive onto an external USB hard drive just in case it all goes belly up further on.

2) Using the Paragon program, clone the entire hard drive - Win7 OS and C: and D: hard drive partitions - onto another external USB hard drive.

3) Take out the outgoing hard drive, pop in the new one, install the clone (following all instructions from the Paragon program manual about booting from a completely virgin hard drive)

4) Laugh at how brilliant my life is.

Any problems with this?

Also, is it worth doing all housekeeping chores (uninstalling unused programs, deleting old files, defragmenting drive, etc...) before or after the migration? Will it make any difference?

Thanks in advance!
 
Solution
Clone the entire drive., not just the C & D partitions. You might miss the System Reserved partition (boot info).

And you should be able to clone direct to the new drive while it is connected via USB. possiblt buy a USB dock to do that.
The way your talking, is to do that twice.

Or...open your existing external drive, put the new 500GB drive in that. Clone directly to the new drive.
Hi

If drive on its way out with bad sectors cloning may fail

So backup first is a good idea

Don't clean up as drive is unreliable and extra use may cause more problems
Especially don't defrag a dying hard drive as all data may disappear


If you have a desktop PC consider connecting old 250 and new 500GB disks and cloning every thing to new drive without expanding to fill new drive
If that succeeds the consider expanding partitions or creating a new partition in free space

Don't forget any hidden recovery partitions

Alternative clone from old 250 to new 500 in usb tray if no desktop PC available

Once this new drive is ready & running on old PC you can clean up system


Regards
Mike Barnes
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Clone the entire drive., not just the C & D partitions. You might miss the System Reserved partition (boot info).

And you should be able to clone direct to the new drive while it is connected via USB. possiblt buy a USB dock to do that.
The way your talking, is to do that twice.

Or...open your existing external drive, put the new 500GB drive in that. Clone directly to the new drive.
 
Solution

franciskimberley

Reputable
Mar 22, 2014
9
0
4,510
Fantastic advice here, thank you both.



I didn't even consider this option and it appears, at least to me, to be the simplest method even if it involves splashing out a few more ££. I'll definitely get some use out of this hardware in the future too.

FWIW the drive I'm replacing doesn't appear to have any immediately critical faults but it's 6/7 years old and boot up is slowing and general responsiveness is slowly dropping off so not confident in its short/medium term health. This is more a "potential disaster aversion" measure than anything else.

Thanks again!