Replacing a old hdd with a new one

You gonna want want a freeware that clones. I don't know of a good one.

however I think acrois true image's trial version might let you do this for free once.

Acronis 10 and newer:

As stated for the other versions, its always best to creat a rescue cd and then restart pc and boot off of that cd and continue, below we will make this cd, once we have completed making this cd, you will need to restart your pc and boot off of this cd, but first read the rest of the post and look at the images, then print the images cause once you boot off of the cd, you won't be able to see any of this.

So lets make the bootable rescue cd:


click image to enlarge

Ok now remember to print the below image and then restart pc and boot off this cd we just made, then do this:


click image to enlarge

When its done, it will say job is complete or something, when it is done, turn off the destination drive, you don't want both drives connected to the PC when it restarts or you Will have 2 OS-s trying to start and that will mess up the clone.

So when cloning is done, turn off the external drive before you reboot PC

Now you don't need to have an external drive to do this, you can use an internal drive, the thing to remember is that once the cloning is complete, you can't boot to windows with both drives on-line, the clone needs to be removed or taken offline by disconnecting the data cable from the back of clone HDD.

If you do choose to go with an externaldrive, please make your own external by getting an external enclosure and your own HDD, this way you can use multiple HDDs with one enclosure, and they are much easier for cloning, since all you do after the clone is complete is to just turn the external off.


Here are a few recommendations for HDD and external enclosure:


choose your HDD

choose your external enclosure

more external enclosure

If you are wondering I use this one for cloning its never on unless I'm using it for cloning.

cloning will move your entire drive, OS/apps/games etc, all in one shot, it basically duplicates your old drive, and you can just take out the old drive and put in the new cloned drive and boot off it as if nothing ever has happened.

You might like to check out Easus Disk Copy or Easus Partition Master.

Have you used it before yourself?

Clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/

Well whichever you use just be sure that during cloning, the cloning software does not erase your original drive, reason for that is that you don't want to pop in your clone to find out its not working and now your original drive has been formated so you now have no copy of your OS.

great write up and info with pics, thanks Tom!

My pleasure