Hard Drive cloning... and stuff...

[Jannothy]

So I have 3 drives in my machine. I have my SSD for my OS and most essential stuff. Then I have a hard drive for all my programs. Lastly I have a drive for storing music, movies, pictures etc. 

Last week I noticed issues with the storage drive where I sometimes couldnt access any files on it. So since some of the things on the drive are very important to me I went out and bought a new drive hoping to copy everything on my storage drive to the new one. BUT! Then I thought - my new drive(1tb) is bigger than my programs-drive (500gig) that is full - so I thought of copying/cloning my programs-drive to the new drive and then copy my storage drive to the old programs drive.

So to be clear - what I would like to do is:

Programsdrive(500gb) -> new drive/new programsdrive (1tb)

Storage drive(250gb) -> programsdrive/new storage drive(500gb)

Old Storage drive(250gb) -> trashcan

 

I need to know if I can clone the programs drive to the new drive without reinstalling everything and how??

 

Needless to say, I have no real experience in hard drive stuff except partitioning, formatting and all the basic know-how you learn from installing os' over and over since xp

 

Thanks. 

[FizzyFantom]

If there is no OS installed on the "programdrive" then you should be able to copy the root directory straight to another drive. You will need to make sure that nothing on that drive is being referenced if you choose to move it from your OS (because the paths will change to another drive letter, which you will have to change back later), however if you only have programs and files on the drive you shouldn't experience any issues with just dragging and dropping the files directly.

Don't do this if you have moved your "AppData\Local" or "AppData\LocalLow" folders to your second drive, this could cause big problems for you if the drive path dissapears while the OS is running.

 

If you have only installed programs and data on the drive then the process should be as simple as:

Drag and drop the data from the old drive to the new drive

Change the drive letter of the new drive to the drive letter of the old drive (from disk management)

 

You could then drag and drop the files from the "storagedrive" into a folder on the new drive.

 

I hope this helps, feel free to ask more questions if you need any more assistance

[Jannothy]

ok - 1 question just to fully understand what you say: The fact that I installed all my programs, games and other stuff on the "programsdrive" does not conflict with a simple drag and drop as long as I change the drive letter back to the original? 

I think what Im not sure of is if a program installed on a non-os-drive is treated like a normal storage file like an mp3 (not counting the drive-letter change thing) - like im able to copy it to a new drive "just like that"?

[Jarsky]

Cloning software is really only needed for entire OS drives and/or advanced features like reducing a partition to move a larger hdd partition to a smaller ssd.

 

You could quite simply use Windows built in Xcopy which is a commandline tool.

 

Plug in your new drive, it will ask you to format/partition it and assign a drive letter.

Open up Command Prompt as admin (right click Command Prompt > Run as Administrator)

 

Then the command you want is: xcopy <source> <destination> /c/h/e/r/k/y/s

 

All of those *switches* (/c/h/e/r/k/y/s) basically tell Windows to copy everything, and to copy all of the attributes, including Read-only, hidden, all sub directories, ownership details, security details, etc...and to avoid any errors. Basically it lets you copy the whole drive without constantly stopping for user interaction.

 

 

Example:

 

Programs = H:

Storage = I:

New drive = J:

 

Then xcopy h:\ j:\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s   (will copy everything on your Programdata drive to your New drive)

 

If you check your new 1TB, it should then have the same used space as the old Program drive

That will free up your Program drive which you can now right click and format (NTFS).

 

Then xcopy i:\ h:\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s   (will copy everything on your Storage drive to your old Programs drive)

 

Again if you check it, you should have the same used space as the old Storage drive.

 

Unplug the old storage drive, then go into Disk Management and change the drive letters of your *new* drives. 

(so the 1TB would now be H: drive and the 500GB would now be I: drive in my example)

[FizzyFantom]

ok - 1 question just to fully understand what you say: The fact that I installed all my programs, games and other stuff on the "programsdrive" does not conflict with a simple drag and drop as long as I change the drive letter back to the original? 

I think what Im not sure of is if a program installed on a non-os-drive is treated like a normal storage file like an mp3 (not counting the drive-letter change thing) - like im able to copy it to a new drive "just like that"?

If you only have programs and data on the drive then you should be able to drag and drop it. Since the OS boot data and registry is stored on the C: drive the stuff on your second drive is more-or-less all just "data" that Windows can see.

 

You should use XCopy as @Jarsky pointed out to make sure that all files are transferred, but your programs and data should be alright if you drag and drop them.

 

Best of luck

[Captain_WD]

So I have 3 drives in my machine. I have my SSD for my OS and most essential stuff. Then I have a hard drive for all my programs. Lastly I have a drive for storing music, movies, pictures etc. 

Last week I noticed issues with the storage drive where I sometimes couldnt access any files on it. So since some of the things on the drive are very important to me I went out and bought a new drive hoping to copy everything on my storage drive to the new one. BUT! Then I thought - my new drive(1tb) is bigger than my programs-drive (500gig) that is full - so I thought of copying/cloning my programs-drive to the new drive and then copy my storage drive to the old programs drive.

So to be clear - what I would like to do is:

Programsdrive(500gb) -> new drive/new programsdrive (1tb)

Storage drive(250gb) -> programsdrive/new storage drive(500gb)

Old Storage drive(250gb) -> trashcan

 

I need to know if I can clone the programs drive to the new drive without reinstalling everything and how??

 

Needless to say, I have no real experience in hard drive stuff except partitioning, formatting and all the basic know-how you learn from installing os' over and over since xp

 

Thanks. 

 

Hey Jannothy,

 

When moving, some programs require the same drive letter of the partition where they are being relocated. Cloning should be the easiest way to transfer everything from your old drives to the new ones. Generally, the most problem free situation is when you transfer from HDD to HDD and the new drive is larger in capacity. The remaining of the drive will be unallocated and you an fix this by going to disk management and either expand our current partition or create a new one from the remaining portion of the new drive. 

I could suggest checking out Acronis True Image WD Edition for this operation: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=GBkMGo

This is for WD drives. If your drives are other brands, Acronis usually has a free version for each major manufacturer. 

 

Captain_WD.

[Jannothy]

Ok - I tried what Jarsky suggested (multiple times) and I got an error in xcopy - "unable to create directory system volume information, access denied"

What is this error, why do I get it and can I fix it somehow?

 

 

Cloning software is really only needed for entire OS drives and/or advanced features like reducing a partition to move a larger hdd partition to a smaller ssd.

 

You could quite simply use Windows built in Xcopy which is a commandline tool.

 

Plug in your new drive, it will ask you to format/partition it and assign a drive letter.

Open up Command Prompt as admin (right click Command Prompt > Run as Administrator)

 

Then the command you want is: xcopy <source> <destination> /c/h/e/r/k/y/s

 

All of those *switches* (/c/h/e/r/k/y/s) basically tell Windows to copy everything, and to copy all of the attributes, including Read-only, hidden, all sub directories, ownership details, security details, etc...and to avoid any errors. Basically it lets you copy the whole drive without constantly stopping for user interaction.

 

 

Example:

 

Programs = H:

Storage = I:

New drive = J:

 

Then xcopy h:\ j:\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s   (will copy everything on your Programdata drive to your New drive)

 

If you check your new 1TB, it should then have the same used space as the old Program drive

That will free up your Program drive which you can now right click and format (NTFS).

 

Then xcopy i:\ h:\ /c/h/e/r/k/y/s   (will copy everything on your Storage drive to your old Programs drive)

 

Again if you check it, you should have the same used space as the old Storage drive.

 

Unplug the old storage drive, then go into Disk Management and change the drive letters of your *new* drives. 

(so the 1TB would now be H: drive and the 500GB would now be I: drive in my example)

[Jarsky]

Thats fine, we dont want to overwrite the System Volume Information folder.

Did it copy everything else?

[Jannothy]

Thats fine, we dont want to overwrite the System Volume Information folder.

Did it copy everything else?

Well besides an error when going into properties on the new drive saying the recycle bin on that drive is damaged and should be removed, I think everything got copied. I dont know about that recycle bin error... is that anything to worry about?

[Jarsky]

Nothing to worry about, just show the operating system files on that drive, rename the $Recycle.Bin file, and then delete it.

That will create a new $Recycle.Bin for the drive.