Need to image/clone hard drive help?

Hey everyone, I have windows 7 on my laptop. I want to clone the hard drive to a shared folder on my network, swap the hard drive out for a new solid state drive I have, then boot my laptop from a usb stick, and restore my image from network share.

can anyone tell me of a free program to do this/point me in the right direction?

Thank you.

 

Generaly if switching to an ssd its better to do a fresh install, as windows detects the type of hard drive and enables a few tweaks to help ssd's live longer.

 

If you are unable to do a fresh install as colemanguy suggested, try AOMEI Partition Assistant and use the Migrate OS to SSD or HDD Wizard. The Migrate Wizard does an Intelligent Sector copy of everything not just Windows. You'll have to connect the SSD externally through an enclosure, cloning kit or docking station first (unless you have provisions for connecting a second drive on your laptop [like some HPs]) but, you'll transfer everything directly instead of having to use the Network Share.

 

Use Windows 7 "Backup and Restore" function then create a "System Image" (clone) to your USB. You will need a Windows 7 Install disk and then follow:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/7702/restoring-windows-7-from-an-image-backup/

 

Hi everyone,

The aforementioned instructions worked great for hard drive migration from old hard drive to new on my laptop. What I did was attach both old/new to another computer and clone between the two drives.

Need some more guidance now if you would please.

I have two servers;

1) SATA Hard drive server 2008

2) SCSI Hard Drive Server 2012 (don't care about formatting this one)

I want to take the contents from server 1 and put on server 2 (60GB clone)

I successfully imaged server 1 to an external USB hard drive, but I can't seem to get the image to server 2. When I try, it never finds the USB drive. What I tried is used the server 2008 backup tool to create an image at root of my USB drive. I then moved the USB drive over to new server, booted from server 2008 CD, and it searched for image, but stated it didn't see it.

What is the easiest way to image Server 1 and overwrite all data onto server 2?

Any pointers?