Cloning HDD questions

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Vaggi93

Vaggi93

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Feb 18, 2014
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Hi guys, i want to clone my OS 500GB HDD as i wanna upgrade to a 2TB HDD. I have found a usefull tutorial on how to clone a HDD but still i have a few questions. But first let me describe the situation.

I currently have 2 HDD's, my OS 500GB drive and a 2TB drive mainly used for games installations etc. Both of my HDD's have limited free space and i don't really wanna delete any of my games :D . So why i am not just bying a third HDD? Well the problem is that my motherboard only has 2 Sata III slots and i dont really want a HDD bottleneck when gaming. Also since my case is not really big i might also face some spatial problems. So i have decided to ditch my old OS 500GB drive and clone its stuff on a brand new 2TB drive. So my questions are these:

1) I understand that i have to plug my new drive along with my old OS drive in order to clone. So before cloning do i need to format the new empty drive?

2) Due to the problems described above, i cant really have all three HDD's plugged when cloning. So in order to hook up the new drive, first, i need to remove my 2TB media drive. In the tutorial i read, the author suggested leaving the new OS drive where i have first plugged it (in my 2TB media drive slot) when cloning and then just remove the old cloned drive. So this means that when i am done with cloning, my new OS drive will be hooked up in my 2TB media drive's old slot, and my 2TB media drive will be hooked up in my previous OS drive's old slot. So i am concerned about any errors coming up. Had anybody had a similar experience? Thanks in advance!!!

Specs:

Motherboard: MSI 760g
Processor: AMD FX-6300
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7870 1GH OC Edition
RAM: 8GB RAM
Storage: Toshiba 500GB + Toshiba 2TB
PSU: 550W
OS: Windows 8.1
 
Solution
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1) If you are playing games that do a lot of loading during play time, the best improvement in game preformance is getting a SSD.

2) Moving HD or SDD to different SATA connections will not affect anything that is on the drives.

3) If a 1 TB SSD is out of your budget range, then get a something like a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB and use it for your most demanding games.

4) As Geofelt said, SATA II is OK for a HD and NOT for a SSD. The only reason for not using a SATA II port is when games require updating while playing or if you are doing video working with the HD.

5) After installing a SSD, move all programs that require FAST access to the SSD.
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geofelt

geofelt

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Oct 9, 2006
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1) A clone utility is a bit for bit replication, You may need to format to make it known to windows.

2) No reason not to have all three drives attached while cloning. Sata II attachment is no negative.

Exactly what motherboard do you have?

Sata III is not important to the performance of a hard drive.
Performance of a HDD is gated by the mechanics of the hard drive itself.
You could simple add a hard drive to a sata II port.

I think a better solution for performance would be to convert your 500gb hard drive to a ssd.
Samsung has a nice migration utility that will copy the contents of your 500gb windows hard drive to their ssd.
If you really need more space on the windows drive, look at a 1tb ssd.
SSD prices are dropping, a 1tb ssd will be in the $350 range.
You will be amazed at the everyday difference. Game level load times will be 2-3x faster.
Yes, the SSD will best be attached to a sata III port for the best sequential performance.
 
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Vaggi93

Vaggi93

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Feb 18, 2014
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Hi geofelt thanks for your answear!!!

My motherboard is this http://www.msi.com/product/mb/760GMA-P34-FX.html#hero-overview

Well if i could mount 3 HDD's i would't need to clone in the first place ;) I would just use all three of them. As i said i also face a spatial problem too since my pc case is fairly small. Regarding SATA III and SATA II, i have always thought that SATA III is "faster", and that SATA II would create a bottlneck as far as loading times are concerned. Your answear troubled me and after a little bit of research, it seems you are right. I mean if a HDD has a reading speed of 150mb/s, even the SATA II 300mb/s limit is far away rght?

Now for the SSD part, as you can see my build is what one would describe as a "budget build". A 350$ SSD is waaay over the top for me (consider the fact that my entire build costs approximately 700$), and anyway i value capacity more right now.

Now lets say that i can't mount more than 2 HDDs. Could i damage my system or my files by swapping slots among the HDDs?
 
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K

KenZen2B

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Oct 27, 2009
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1) If you are playing games that do a lot of loading during play time, the best improvement in game preformance is getting a SSD.

2) Moving HD or SDD to different SATA connections will not affect anything that is on the drives.

3) If a 1 TB SSD is out of your budget range, then get a something like a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB and use it for your most demanding games.

4) As Geofelt said, SATA II is OK for a HD and NOT for a SSD. The only reason for not using a SATA II port is when games require updating while playing or if you are doing video working with the HD.

5) After installing a SSD, move all programs that require FAST access to the SSD.
 
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Vaggi93

Vaggi93

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Feb 18, 2014
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Hi KenZen2B!!!

Well as i said above my main motive for upgrading is limited free space, so a 500GB SSD won't be that much of an improvement to a 500GB HDD space-wise!!! :D I think a SSD will come later in the future. I wouldnt consider anything with less than 2TB storage so its obvious that the SSD option is a no-go!

Anyway i was concerned about HDDs registering the sata connection they are connected to or something like that, and thus having problems with registry or even data loss but i think you are propably right!!! Thank you both for your answers
 
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