Can u clone from sata 2 to sata 3 ?

[sabo_r]

My current system's primary hard drive (C is a Western Digital sata 2 500GB 7200rpm drive & the OS is windows 7 64 bit.

I have a Western Digital sata3 1TB 7200rpm drive coming in & I want to
know if I can clone my current system drive to this new one.

Western Digital offers a cloning tool but it implies that you have to plug it into the same port as the old one. In this case, the sata2 is plugged into a sata2 port whearas the new drive will be plugged into a sata3 port.

I also ask if the drive has to be "basic" or can it be "dynamic" ?

 

[Hawkeye22]

You can use WD's cloning tool. The drives don't need plugged into the same port considering that it needs to read from the old drive while simultameously writing to the new drive.

I'm not sure if it works with dynamic disks. The only way to know is to try it. I suspect it will work though since cloning software usually works at a lower hardware level.

 

[sabo_r]

thanks for the help. Taking this further -- here is what I'll do: I'll install the new sata3 drive set it up as a "basic" disk & format it.

Then I'll run the WD cloning tool - cloning my C:\ drive to it.
Next, I shut down & unplug the old sata2 system drive & go into the bios &
change the boot sequence so the new sata3 drive is the primary drive. Then boot-up windows.
From there I go in device manager & change the drive letter of the new drive to C: if need be.

If there is something out of order with the above please let me know.

 

[Hawkeye22]

That all sounds fine, although you shouldn't need to initialize and format the new drive. The cloning process will take care of this.

 

[sabo_r]

Best answer selected by sabo_r.

 

[sabo_r]

in & running -- all good. thanks