Replacing a HDD

I have a new HDD on the way to rplace my old one, I plan on using a clone program of some sort so i do not have to reinstall anything since i cant seem to find the install disk for my OS and a few other programs.

My question is, how would I go about this?, do I need to setup the new drive as a secondary or slave drive to run the clone program or just plug it in? and if i need to set it up how do i do that? once cloned I will remove the old drive and put it away as an emergency backup, so it will be a single drive system.

mother board is a MSI 870A-G54, I can provide any other info you need just let me know.

 

Is the new drive SATA or PATA? That would determine if you need to do anything in terms of setting jumpers for master/slave. If SATA no jumper settings are necessary. Pretty much just plug and play.

Both ToDo Backup and Macrium Reflect are good free cloning programs. I believe they both allow you to burn bootable CDs which are handy when restoring an image to a HD.

You want to select the option to clone the whole disk rather than selecting all the separate partitions. It should be no problem as long as the new drive is at least as large as your old one.

I haven't done a clone in a while but usually you have a choice of sector by sector or a faster option. Sector by sector copies everything including free/deleted space etc. The other option only copies used space. I've used both options and noticed no real difference both worked fine. Sector by sector may take a couple of hours depending on the size of the drive.

Both programs are very capable. I eventually chose Macrium to continue making images of my OS partition but I can't really say why I made that choice. Like I said both work well.

 

I would like to add one more thing to sach2's post. When cloning, do not boot up the computer with both drives connected after the cloning operation or you will have problems booting. After the clone operation, shut down the computer and disconnect the drive you cloned from.

Basically what they are saying is never boot the computer with both drives connected if they have system boot partitions and use a bootable partition manager like Gparted Live CD or Partition Wizard to delete the existing partitions on the old drive once you know the clone operation is successful.

Also, if you are using Todo, a clone operation will require you to extend your partition(s) if you are cloning to a larger drive because Todo will make a one to one copy. If you clone a 500MB drive to a 1TB drive, the 1TB drive will be 500MB with 500MB of unallocated space.

 

new drive is a Seagate Barracuda 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32 MB Cache its replacing a Western Digital WD3200-AAJS, the western digital is about 5 years old, still works but time for an upgrade, once the new drive is installed my plan was to just pull the old drive and store it as an emergency bootable drive for my desktop.

I was looking at using the free trial of the acronis easy merge software, I am looking for the absolute easiest way to do this, I do not have an external enclosure so I will have to hook it up internal to do the clone, but would like a way to just plug it in, start up, run a program to clone, then shut down, pull the old drive out, plug the new one in the primary slot and be rolling.

 

Todo backup allows you to do a simple clone.

http://www.todo-backup.com/backup-resource/copy-and-clone-hard-drive.htm

Another good clone software is HDclone as it also supports the new Advanced Format Drives.

Here is some info on Advanced Format Drives.

http://consumer.media.seagate.com/2010/03/the-digital-den/4k-sector-hard-drive-primer/

I have done some research and it seems that Seagate's drives can now do the alignment dynamically using firmware. A great solution. So the software you use to clone makes no difference if it can align or not.

http://consumer.media.seagate.com/2010/06/the-digital-den/advanced-format-drives-with-smartalign/

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=746f43fce2489210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD

 

I did some searching, unfortunatly according to the info I could find on the model number of the drive I am getting ST310005N1A1AS-RK it doesnt say anything about having the new smart align or the advanced format, according to the artical you linked it states all drives after jan 2011, I am betting my drive was made before that.

 

I should have pointed out that if you have Windows 7 on the drive you are cloning, there should not be a problem. Do you have XP or Windows 7.

Western Digital has an alignment tool to run after a clone and I thought Seagate did also but I guess not. I would use HDclone to do the clone as it supports the Advanced Format Drive. You can check the alignment of the drive after the clone.

http://synsol.eu/blog/2010/03/disk-...ormat-your-partitions-with-correct-alignment/

If it turns out that the drive is not aligned, you can try the software provided by Western Digital to see if it works, Purchase alignment software from Paragon, or use Gparted to realign the partition.

Edit: you may want to contact Seagate to see if this drive is an Advanced Format Drive. If it is not, then there is no problem. Use either Todo, Macrium, or HDclone.

 

yea, windows 7 home premium 64bit, what is this alignment I need to worry about? as I am hoping for a fast in and out and done operation, like copying a disc.

 

Windows 7 has a sector offset of 2048 with 512k per sector it gives a sector offset of 1048576. You can find it by Start>run, type msinfo32
press enter, > components > storage > disks

Partition Starting Offset 1,048,576 bytes

If you do this your current installation you should see this number. It should be the exact same thing after cloning.

 

I am past the 10 minute edit period so I am posting a correction to my last post. One sector on the hard drive is 512 bytes = 512k sector

 

ahhh so your talking about the fact that the new advanced format discs have 4k per sector where the older drives have 512 per, that will cause the sectors of the boot portion to not line up?

I will be sure to check when the new hdd if it has the new format 4k sectors or the old 512, if it is the old format then its just hook up the new drive, run the clone software, unhook the old drive and done? if its the new format I must make sure i get software that takes that into account then its the same operation as above?

 

That is correct. I did find out that Todo backup 3.0 and later can support the new format when you do a clone. Just do not check align for ssd. The person in the forum had a alignment of 1024 which is still good because it is divisible by 8.

http://forum.easeus.com/viewtopic.php?t=21404&highlight=align

 

I still think that for doing a simple clone, HDclone would be the way to go. I don't think you would need all the bells and whistles that comes with Todo, especially since Windows 7 has it's own very good basic system imaging program. Has worked like a charm every time I have used it.

 

so the operation with that software should be, hook up the new drive, format new drive, follow instructions to clone old drive to new one, shutdown, remove the drives and fully install the new one then boot up?

sorry for the in-depth questioning, never done any of this before and want to make sure i have a very good idea what I am doing before I start.

My only previous experience with hdd's was putting a windows 7 disc in the computer and rebooting to start installing it over vista that was allready on it.

 

Correct, but you only have to disconnect the original drive before you boot up. Then change the sata cable of the cloned drive to Sata port 0 in order to boot that drive.You may have to use a partition manager to extend your partitions. Being a sata drive, you do not have to worry about master or slave. After you see that the clone worked, connect the original drive and then boot up with a Gparted Live CD or Bootable partition wizard and delete the partitons, repartition and format if you wish to use it for data storage. Just remember to never boot to the OS with both drives connected after the clone.

Edit: I am not sure how your case is set up so you may want to disconnect and remove the drives in order to put the cloned and original drives in the locations you prefer.

 

It will be going into an Antec 300, I am swapping cases and doing a cpu cooler upgrade at the same time as the HDD upgrade, this old X-cruiser case just runs too hot, and since I am going to start trying some OC'ing I got an antec 300 illusion on the way with extra case fans and a scythe mugen 3 to upgrade my cooling.

thanks for all your help in understanding the step by step process, I know I can get annoying with a new question every time you think you got me answered but I just like to have a good understanding of what I am doing before i start doing it.

 

I apologize but I cannot find where to post my question
my situation is this:
1 Bought a new internal drive
2 going to use it as a drive for windows 7
3 my xp64 wont see it
4 my linux live can see it
5 linux live wont format the drive in any fs, it gives and error about mounting
6 finally my question how do i format the new internal drive when windowsxp64 wont see it?
Thanks and sorry again for posting in the wrong thread