copying C drive

[jolynyk]

My existing C drive is only 100 gig & only 9 gigs free. If I bought a 500 gig HD or more, is there anyway that I can copy everything from my existing drive & put it into my computer?? An aquantance tells me this can be done..

[Andy Sandoval]

If the 500 G hard drive is an external one it would be as easy as copy and paste.

[jolynyk]

andy I was hoping to copy everything & then replace the existing drive with the new so it could then become my C drive.. I do have a new 1 TB external drive..

[Mitch Drumm]

There are 2 similar ways that should work in your case.

1: Make an image of your current C and store that image on your external drive. Install the new internal drive. Then restore the image of the current C from the external back onto the new drive.


2: Install the new internal drive alongside the existing C drive and make a "clone" of the existing C directly onto the new drive, without any intervening image and without getting your external drive involved.

Several programs will do 1. Fewer will do 2.

Whichever you choose, it would be a good idea for you to copy all of your personal stuff over to the external drive first, as a precaution for any disaster.


Acronis will do both 1 and 2 and Wiz would probably sell you a copy through his website.

It works pretty well, but is short of foolproof.

Imaging or cloning saves you the trouble of reinstalling your applications and Windows.

Another alternative:

Disconnect your existing hard drive so it has no power.

Install the new internal hard drive and reinstall Windows and your programs to it. Then temporarily reconnect your old drive and copy your personal files (pictures, email, video, mp3s, text files like Word documents, whatever you have) back from the old drive to the new drive.



This last method forces you to reinstall Windows and your applications, but relieves you of having to deal with imaging or cloning. Take your pick.

Other factors may come into play---you don't have a Windows disc, you don't have room for 2 internal drives, etc.

Some would advise you to split the new drive into 2 partitions (C and D). Use C for Windows and applications. Use D for your personal stuff. It's very easily done. But that's another story and not required. It's just personal preference.

Put on your best sheepskin chaps and take a deep seat in the saddle before you start. A knife in your teeth can't hurt.

[jolynyk]

WOW.. that gives me a few alternatives..
I kinda like the first 2 methods best for my limited abilities..
I have my 1TB drive sitting nrxt to my computer, so could I either do the image or Clone via my USB cable, then take out the other drive & install the 1TB drive into my computer??
I would still have my existing C drive as a backup in case anything went wrong, right??

Don't know about partitioning the new drive.. I do have a bunch of programs that always want to default to C drive.. BIAB for one..

[Mitch Drumm]

I have my 1TB drive sitting nrxt to my computer, so could I either do the image or Clone via my USB cable, then take out the other drive & install the 1TB drive into my computer??
I would still have my existing C drive as a backup in case anything went wrong, right??

Don't know about partitioning the new drive.. I do have a bunch of programs that always want to default to C drive.. BIAB for one..

I thought you said your external drive was 1 TB and you were going to get a new 500 GB internal drive that you want to become your new C, with the 1 TB remaining external.

You should be able to put the 1 TB inside, but why did you buy a 1 TB drive in an external enclosure? What did you have in mind?

I assumed you were going to put a 500 inside and use the 1 TB as an external backup. Maybe not?

Your existing C would remain unchanged if the cloning or imaging goes well. You could then reformat it and use it as a backup drive, or put it in the closet as is, or get rid of it.

If you want to image: the image file has to be stored somewhere temporarily. That would presumably be on an external drive. Then you restore that image from external to the new internal.

If you want to image and you DON'T want to buy a 500 MB drive, it looks like you would have to make 2 partitions on the 1 TB external--call them D and E for now. When you make the image of C, you put it on E. Then you move the external drive inside. Then you boot with an Acronis rescue disc and restore the image file that is on E to D---at which time D would become the new C. You have to make 2 partitions because you can't restore an image to the partition containing the image. It has to go to some other partition.

Savvy? Imaging and cloning can get confusing.

If you want to clone, without an image: I think that can be done through a USB cable to an external drive, but I'm not absolutely positive. Then you would move that drive inside. I'm familiar only with cloning to an internal drive.

All drives have partitions. Otherwise, they can't be used. The question is do you want 1 partition or more than 1. Most programs want to be installed on a C partition and having 2 partitions would not interfere with that. BIAB says "I want to install on C" and you say "OK"--whether you have 1 partition or 5 partitions. You will have to partition that 500 GB drive to use it. Whether you make 1, 2, or more partitions is purely up to you. It's as easy to make 3 as it is to make 1.

You also have to make sure that the external and any other drive you might buy have the right type of connectors to attach to your motherboard if they are going inside. Most recent drives are "SATA", but if you have an old motherboard, it may not have SATA connections.

[jolynyk]

Hi Mitch, I don't have a 500 gig HD, I would have to purchase one....
I do have a new external 1TB I was going to use for storage of BIAB music, pictures, etc, but haven't used it yet.. I figured at the moment I could take it out of the enclosure & use it for my C drive & purchase another one for an external later..

the main reason for the external drive is my wife & I spend our winters in Tx from first week of Nov. till mid April.. I used to haul my desktop back & forth, but that got old pretty fast. so I have a desktop here, & I have a desktop which I leave in Tx. so I put most of the stuff I need eg. my wife's recipes (of course)& other STUFF & just haul my external drive back & forth..

But I can buy a 500 gig for a C drive if that would be better.. I suppose the computer would load a bit faster with a smaller drive than 1TB. is this correct?

If I use my 1TB, I would probably make 3 partitions , 1 for music, 1 for photos etc..

It's just after posting I think I need a better C drive for now rather than an External storage..

I still have almost 2 months to get a bigger External.. I do have a 250 gig I have been using..

[Mitch Drumm]

Hi Mitch, I think I said If I bought a 500 gig HD....
I do have a new external 1TB I was going to use for storage of BIAB music, pictures, etc, but haven't used it yet.. I figured at the moment I could take it out of the enclosure & use it for my C drive & purchase another one for an external later..

But I can buy a 500 gig for a C drive if that would be better.. I suppose the computer would load a bit faster with a smaller drive than 1TB. is this correct?

If I use my 1TB, I would probably make 3 partitions , 1 for music, 1 for photos etc..

It's just after posting I think I need a better C drive for now rather than an External storage..

The path of least resistance for you and also the best use of time/money/drive space would be to:

1: buy another drive big enough to hold Windows and the original copies of all of your stuff. 500 MB or 640 MB or 750 MB are typical choices.

2: Leave the external 1 TB where it is and use it to back up everything on the internal. Don't partition the external.

3: Under that scenario, the simplest thing to do would probably be to make an image of C, store it on the external, remove your current internal, replace it with the new internal, and restore the image from the external to the new internal.

When you restore the image is when you have to decide on your partitioning scheme on the internal drive.

You could choose just a single C partition and later change to 2 partitions if you want to---rather than making 2 partitions at the time of the image restoration. Might avoid a problem or two that way.

I personally would not divide an internal drive into partitions for photos and another for music, etc.

I'd just use either C alone or C and D, with D containing photos, music, etc all divided by a folder structure, not in separate partitions. If you start getting into 3 or 4 partitions, you inevitably run out of space on one of them because they grow at different rates than anticipated.

[jolynyk]

OK thanks much. I will look for a 750 or so... Yup it would save taking this one out of the case.. & drives are pretty reasonable now... I hate tto put in a smaller one for the price difference, & then kick myself around the block later for not putting in a bigger one & then have to redo it somewhere down the road...

I really appreciate your help & advice. I need all the help I can get, cause I ain't no computer tech, so I need the easiest method. And taking it into a computer shop here is pretty much out of the question.. dollar wise..

[jolynyk]

Hi Mitch, I think I said If I bought a 500 gig HD....
I do have a new external 1TB I was going to use for storage of BIAB music, pictures, etc, but haven't used it yet.. I figured at the moment I could take it out of the enclosure & use it for my C drive & purchase another one for an external later..

But I can buy a 500 gig for a C drive if that would be better.. I suppose the computer would load a bit faster with a smaller drive than 1TB. is this correct?

If I use my 1TB, I would probably make 3 partitions , 1 for music, 1 for photos etc..

It's just after posting I think I need a better C drive for now rather than an External storage..

The path of least resistance for you and also the best use of time/money/drive space would be to:

1: buy another drive big enough to hold Windows and the original copies of all of your stuff. 500 MB or 640 MB or 750 MB are typical choices.

2: Leave the external 1 TB where it is and use it to back up everything on the internal. Don't partition the external.

3: Under that scenario, the simplest thing to do would probably be to make an image of C, store it on the external, remove your current internal, replace it with the new internal, and restore the image from the external to the new internal.

When I put my new drive in, would I have to format it first before I restore the image, or will that happen during restoration??





I personally would not divide an internal drive into partitions for photos and another for music, etc.

I'd just use either C alone or C and D, with D containing photos, music, etc all divided by a folder structure, not in separate partitions. If you start getting into 3 or 4 partitions, you inevitably run out of space on one of them because they grow at different rates than anticipated.

OK, gotcha.. I'll leave it one drive for now, because I 'll still have the external for all my junk...

Now off to do some shopping for a drive ....

[Wiz Feinberg]

The best way to transfer everything from an old hard drive to a new, bigger hard drive is by means of a cloning program. Sometimes, a retail boxed hard drive will come with cloning software thrown in. Check the details on the boxes before you buy your new hard disk. One of them, preferably Western Digital, will have a clone disk included.

Note, this only applies to retail box drives, not OEM bare drives.

The disk may be a 3 1/2" floppy diskette, which requires either a built in floppy drive, or an external USB floppy drive. You will need to enter your BIOS on startup and change the boot sequence to boot from the Floppy or USB drive before the master hard drive.

You would unplug the power from the case, install the new drive on top or under the old one and connect it to the power and signal cables for a spare drive. If your case lacks these you'll need adapter cables, or splitters.

Once you install the empty new drive you would insert the boot disk containing the clone program, plug in the power and monitor cable and mouse and keyboard, then power on. Follow the prompts carefully, when choosing the source (old drive) and destination (new drive). There will be an option to fill the empty space if the new drive is bigger. Use that option. Once you begin the clone do not turn off the power. In 20 minutes or so you will be ready to boot from the new drive. Unplug the old one and try booting into Windows.

If all goes well you can look at the jumpers on the back of the hard drives, if they are P-IDE style. Set the jumper on the new one as master and the old as slave. If your drives are SATA, plug the new cloned drive into SATA 0 and the old one into SATA 1. You can assign it a drive letter of your choice, inside Windows, or accept the letter assigned automatically, format it and use it for backups.

If you cannot find free cloning software with a new drive (unimaginable), your next best bet is Acronis True Image. It has a built in clone feature. It has a medium difficulty learning curve. Acronis creates bootable images of the entire hard drive, including the master boot record.

[Mitch Drumm]

I doubt if imaging programs are sophisticated enough to format a bare drive--I could be wrong.

I would plan on formatting it myself.

Do a full format, not a "quick" format. Might take 3 to 5 hours.

It's a good policy to give a new drive a workout anyway before committing your precious stuff to it. A certain percentage of drives are dead on arrival and another percentage fail very quickly.

So--I'd format and partition it myself and work it over---get copies of your data on it, make files and folders, delete files and folders, etc, just to convince yourself it is sound.

Then you can delete everything on it, repartition if necessary, and restore your image to it.

[jolynyk]

OOO,Owch,
Looked fairly simple till Wiz chimed in..lol... I'm starting to feel very inadequate.... maybe it ain't a job for me after all....
Chip where are you when I need you

[Wiz Feinberg]

OOO,Owch,
Looked fairly simple till Wiz chimed in..lol... I'm starting to feel very inadequate.... maybe it ain't a job for me after all....
Chip where are you when I need you :cry:

Jolynyk;
There must be a computer shop, or seller within an hour's drive. Find them and ask if they can clone your existing C drive onto a new large one they would sell to you. I can't imagine a computer shop not having the cloning software. Most use Norton Ghost, or Acronis True Image.

If you can't find anybody within driving distance, move pure data files off the C drive and onto your 1TB external drive. Do not try to move actual programs, just things saved under My Documents, or in Images, or Music folders.

After you have moved all audio and video and other saved and downloaded files to the external drive, download Crap Cleaner. Install it, look over the options for temporary and cache files in Windows, Internet Explorer and Firefox. Check or uncheck as you see fit, then click Analyze. It will tell you how much crap it is able to clean, with those checked settings. If you are confident, click Run Cleaner.

You can also delete Microsoft update uninstallers with Ccleaner. The option is under "Advanced > Hotfix Uninstallers." Check that option to remove these uninstallers for hotfixes that are installed and working as they should. Most patches are good, but those that aren't usually show it within a day. If your Windows Updates aren't causing any problems, remove those uninstallers, with Ccleaner.

After you have moved important data files and deleted temp and uninstaller files, there will be huge gaps on your hard drive. Close all programs and run Disk Defragmenter. Eat lunch while this happens.

After the defragmenter has finished, go to My Computer and right click on the C drive icon. Choose Properties from the flyout menu. On the C drive options, click on Tools. Under Error Checking click on Check Now. Check the first option to check for and fix file system errors. If you have all day, also check the second option to scan for bad sectors. Click Start. A box will pop-up telling you that the error checking can't happen while Windows is operating. It will ask if you wish to schedule a scan during the next reboot. Answer in the affirmative, then reboot the PC. Walk away. Do not touch any keys during the reboot, or the scan will be canceled. Once the chkdsk scan begins it will fix any file system errors it finds.

If you checked the option to scan for bad sectors it will try to move partially readable data out of those sectors and mark them as unusable in the future. It will report how many bad sectors were found upon completion. This takes a long time, but is useful on an older drive.

These procedures will give you a little more time to use the computer as is. When the opportunity presents itself, have somebody clone your cleaned and defragmented and error corrected C drive to a new larger one.

[jolynyk]

Thanks Wiz... printed out your instructions & will do..
John

[Earnest Bovine]

slightly off topic:
There is a cool free program called WinDirStat that I find really helpful in analyzing my disk to find which files and folders are space hogs. The graphic display is really cute and informative.

[jolynyk]

slightly off topic:
There is a cool free program called WinDirStat that I find really helpful in analyzing my disk to find which files and folders are space hogs. The graphic display is really cute and informative.

Thanks Earnest I'll look into it.

[David Winfrey]

I use Acronis True Image and a hard drive docking station in my studio to clone my system drive every time I do an update so if anything goes wrong I can very easily restore everything to it's previous state.
I've used several software packages, but for me Acronis is the simplest, quickest and most painless. I wouldn't be without it!

[Wiz Feinberg]

Since Acronis True Image (ATI) is getting so many mentions in this topic, I want to let you know that version 2011 has been released. The price is the same as last year, but some new features have been added, including full integration with Windows 7.

Existing users of ATI 2010 can upgrade for under $30.

I have a web page describing all of the details about Acronis True Image 2011. There are links to try it, buy it, or upgrade. There is also a section devoted to Acronis Disk Director. It is used to manage partitions and work with volumes, now including dynamic and multiple disks, and is for advanced users.