Cloning a hard drive

llfreelance · Dec 19, 2014

My current computer recently stopped working (mobo caught fire). I am sending in the computer for RMA but the company suggests I backup my hard drive first. Since I don't have an external hard drive and my computer isn't working, after searching around a little, I thought cloning my hard drive would be the best thing. To do this I was wondering if I could take the HDD out of my computer and put it inside my old computer with another HDD and somehow do it like that. Would this work? How would I go about it? My old computer is probably around 6 years old. A dell inspiron I believe.

Thanks in advance for any help!

ingtar33 · Dec 19, 2014

why not just pull your hard drive out and send the tower back without the drive. i'm sorta amazed they want the hard drive back. usually these companies are pretty clear about you keeping it for data loss liability purposes.

though if it's an aser or gateway they will ask for the drive back too. it's part of thier wonderful world of what they call "customer service"

setting that asside to back up your data pulling the hard drive and sticking it in an old pc will work. if your toasted pc uses win7/win8 99% of your data will be located in c:\users\<username> folder
just copy the following folders

c:\users\<username>\desktop
c:\users\<username>\my documents
c:\users\<username>\my music
c:\users\<username>\my pictures
c:\users\<username>\my videos

if your web browser is IE you can get your bookmarks from
c:\users\<username>\favorites

if you have itunes on your pc for an iphone/ipad/ipod you can get all the data from
c:\users\<username>\itunes

if you have outlook on your pc, and want to save your email and the like, this will get a little more complicated because of the different versions of outlook, but basically for outlook 2010 and 2013your email data file is located-
c:\users\<username>\appdata\loca\microsoft\outlook\*.pst (copy the pst files located there)

your signatures are located in
c:\users\<username>\appdata\roaming\microsoft\signatures

your autofill email addresses are located at
c:\users\<username>\appdata\local\microsoft\outlook\roamcache\Stream_autocomplete_XXXXXXX

when you get your pc back, make your user account in windows, and just paste all those folders straight in. when you load outlook for the first time, create your email account(s) attach the datafile (its in the advanced email setup), make sure the sig and autocomplete files are in their origonal locations and go to town.

Beezy · Dec 19, 2014

can you back up important files onto CDs/DVDs/and USB sticks?

USAFRet · Dec 19, 2014

If you must send it back with the drive, create an image, not a clone.

A clone of that drive will use a whole other drive.
An image of that drive can exist in a folder on a different drive.

Nine Layer Nige · Dec 21, 2014

Clonezilla will clone your hdd onto another one.

Alternatively, you could do a System Image Backup to take a complete system backup, then Restore it on the other drive.

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Cloning a hard drive

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