procedure to connect drive when...

Scenario:

I have a cloned hard drive for back up purposes that is disconnected from the computer. I anticipate re-cloning it sometime to keep it up to date but I'm not sure of the procedure to reconnect the cloned drive to the computer.

Question:

My plan is to boot the computer before connecting the cloned drive, then attach the power cable to the drive, and finally the SATA cable. Is this the correct way to do it?

Alternately, could I/should I connect the cloned drive before booting? My bios is set do boot from disk 0, so I'm assuming it won't get confused and try to boot from disk 1 (the cloned drive). Is that a correct assumption?

 

Generally speaking, you MUST connect the hard drive with the PC turned off and unplugged from the power outlet. Some computers have SATA drive connectors that can drives can be plugged into when the PC is running, but that usually applies to SATA ports that are accessible without opening the case. To be on the safe side, power down, and unplug the power cord first. The boot order doesn't need to be changed in the BIOS. If your cloning program supports external USB drives, it's probably best to put the drive in an enclosure and use the USB ports for safety and convenience.

 

Thanks for clarifying that. (I had read elswhere in a forum unrelated to this site that one should not boot with both c drive and the cloned drive connected as the computer would be confused as to what drive to boot from...didn't really sound right to me, but who am I to question? So I checked here.)

Thanks again.

 

I was just thinking about it, and it's probably best to check the BIOS immediately after connecting the drive just to be sure that the boot order hasn't changed (it most likely won't but computers can do strange things for no reason). Even if the PC did try to boot from the cloned drive, nothing bad would happen other than it just wouldn't boot and at worst you'd get a blue screen error....