Cloning hard drive questions

Legodude50 · March 19, 2020

I have a ADATA XPG 8200 pro 1 terabyte coming in the mail Saturday and I was wondering about cloning. I’ve never swapped hard drives before so I’m very new to this. It seems reinstalling would be a lot more involved and time consuming and I also share the pc with my wife so I don’t want to mess around or screw up her lay out. When I clone my HDD to my new M.2 SSD is it a copy or more of a direct transfer? Or do both of the hard drives now contain the same information? Ideally I’d like both of them to contain the information 1.) because it would be good to have the data backed up and 2.) just in case something goes wrong with the cloning software. I’m very uninformed in all of this. So please the more information someone can share to make this transition to my new SSD would be absolutely appreciated. Thank you

aDoomGuy · March 19, 2020

4 minutes ago, Legodude50 said:

I have a ADATA XPG 8200 pro 1 terabyte coming in the mail Saturday and I was wondering about cloning. I’ve never swapped hard drives before so I’m very new to this. It seems reinstalling would be a lot more involved and time consuming and I also share the pc with my wife so I don’t want to mess around or screw up her lay out. When I clone my HDD to my new M.2 SSD is it a copy or more of a direct transfer? Or do both of the hard drives now contain the same information? Ideally I’d like both of them to contain the information 1.) because it would be good to have the data backed up and 2.) just in case something goes wrong with the cloning software. I’m very uninformed in all of this. So please the more information someone can share to make this transition to my new SSD would be absolutely appreciated. Thank you

Well, to start. I would reinstall but it can be a lot of work so cloning can be a good idea. I did it once and it worked decently enough. If you clone one drive to another they will have the same information so it is a copy to put it that way.

Quote

The previous disk’s contents are copied in full, including all data, installed programs, and personal settings. It eliminates the time-consuming process of manually copying data, reinstalling software and add-ons, and resetting your system’s personal preferences.

https://www.adata.com/en/ss/software-5/

ARikozuM · March 19, 2020

Use Macrium Reflect. Never had an issue making an image and then installing that to another drive. You will have to extend your drive afterwards.

The_russian · March 19, 2020

I can second using Macrium Reflect. I had problems with other programs but Reflect did exactly what I needed it to do. Before you start cloning, I would create a backup either of the whole drive or just the most important data if that isn't possible, just in case something happens to go wrong in the process.

Legodude50 · March 19, 2020

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

Use Macrium Reflect. Never had an issue making an image and then installing that to another drive. You will have to extend your drive afterwards.

I was planning on using the included software that the SSD said it comes with but if you think the software you listed is better then I’ll go with it. Also what do you mean by extend my drive afterwards?

doommood · March 19, 2020

Use Clonezilla or Acronis True Image to make a complete disk-to-disk clone. Either one should copy all the partitions, data from disk to disk but also check whether they are identical. Here are the manuals for instance.

https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/03_Disk_to_disk_clone

https://kb.acronis.com/content/61665