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transfering my OS from one hardrive to a newer one

Hello this may be so obvious but i don't have a clue is it a simple copy everything from old hard drive to new hard drive or do I need to go into bios and assign the new hard drive as a point of the pc to start up with it

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You need to give more info. Is this Windows? Is new drive larger or same size with old?

 

You can clone if new drive is same size or bigger. It's done with bootable utility as drives need to be inactive while process is going on. I personally don't recommend it in most cases. Only if you have some very special config there.

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3 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

You need to give more info. Is this Windows? Is new drive larger or same size with old?

 

You can clone if new drive is same size or bigger. It's done with bootable utility as drives need to be inactive while process is going on. I personally don't recommend it in most cases. Only if you have some very special config there.

Actually, that is not totally true. You can clone from a larger drive to a smaller drive with some utilites (I recommend Macrium Reflect Free) as long as the content will comfortably fit on the smaller drive (keep in mind a drive will format smaller than it's rated size and you should leave 10-15% of an HDD and 20-25% of an SSD empty for best operation).

 

It is NOT necessary for drives to be inactive during the cloning process. Iv'e cloned drives numerous times while they were still active using Macrium Reflect. Also, there is nothing wrong with cloning one drive to another as long as the source drive has no major errors and, if cloning an OS drive or partition, the OS is working fine. It saves a lot of work. The only time I've ever had a problem with cloning was when the source drive had become corrupted, causing the clone to fail. 

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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19 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

It is NOT necessary for drives to be inactive during the cloning process. Iv'e cloned drives numerous times while they were still active using Macrium Reflect. Also, there is nothing wrong with cloning one drive to another as long as the source drive has no major errors and, if cloning an OS drive or partition, the OS is working fine. It saves a lot of work. The only time I've ever had a problem with cloning was when the source drive had become corrupted, causing the clone to fail. 

 

Does that work when you are booted on OS drive and want to clone that drive? I've only used Acronis WD Efition and it said drive must be inactive (aka it was run before OS lsunch). And that was with data drive.

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1 minute ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

 

Does that work when you are booted on OS drive and want to clone that drive? I've only used Acronis WD Efition and it said drive must be inactive (aka it was run before OS lsunch). And that was with data drive.

yes it is windows 10 the new drive is 4tb 

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12 minutes ago, proxylagoon said:

yes it is windows 10 the new drive is 4tb 

Should be all good then. Check out Macrium and Acronis, and some guides on how to. It's been few years since I did this.

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so when it comes to cloning windows 10 OS onto a newer hard drive for my desktop will it automatically notice that the that's the place where my OS or do I have to go into Bios ?

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6 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

 

Does that work when you are booted on OS drive and want to clone that drive? I've only used Acronis WD Efition and it said drive must be inactive (aka it was run before OS lsunch). And that was with data drive.

Yes. It works just fine. I can even use the computer while it is cloning. I should mention I hav onbly done this with Win 7. I have cloned HDDs and SSDs up to 4TB.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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6 hours ago, proxylagoon said:

so when it comes to cloning windows 10 OS onto a newer hard drive for my desktop will it automatically notice that the that's the place where my OS or do I have to go into Bios ?

Since it works as described sbove, you need to select new drive as main boot drive from BIOS once everything is finished. Windows is annoying and can confuse you, so you can also disconnect old drive while checking that everything works on new drive.

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39 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Since it works as described sbove, you need to select new drive as main boot drive from BIOS once everything is finished. Windows is annoying and can confuse you, so you can also disconnect old drive while checking that everything works on new drive.

Wrong again. After cloning, remove the original drive, replace it with the cloned drive, then reboot. The C: drive will have its original letter restored although, if you have any additional lettered partitions on the drive, you may need to reletter them. If the new drive is larger, you may need to expand one or more partitions (easily done with MiniTool Partition Wizard; do this while you still have the original drive as a backup).

 

If you want to use the old drive, install it in a new slot in the computer or use a USB dock, then reformat it (a quick format is good enough).

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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11 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Wrong again. After cloning, remove the original drive, replace it with the cloned drive, then reboot. The C: drive will have its original letter restored although, if you have any additional lettered partitions on the drive, you may need to reletter them. If the new drive is larger, you may need to expand one or more partitions (easily done with MiniTool Partition Wizard; do this while you still have the original drive as a backup).

 

If you want to use the old drive, install it in a new slot in the computer or use a USB dock, then reformat it (a quick format is good enough).

Is it, though? If you boot with new drive it should show second drive as normal data drive. I know it's been a while since I did it, and I cloned smaller data drive to bogger. Booted Windows drive is always C. Only problem is Win10 being super-annoying with boot selection if old drive is left connected. I would too recommend disconnecting old drive after cloning, but I also think it could also left there.

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4 hours ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Is it, though? If you boot with new drive it should show second drive as normal data drive. I know it's been a while since I did it, and I cloned smaller data drive to bogger. Booted Windows drive is always C. Only problem is Win10 being super-annoying with boot selection if old drive is left connected. I would too recommend disconnecting old drive after cloning, but I also think it could also left there.

Where you were wrong was saying it was necessary to go into the BIOS to change the boot order. That would result in a no boot at all situation because canging the boot order wouldn't change the drive letters of the new drive as long as the original boot drive was present.

 

Also, the SATA port one boots from can affect performance, depending on the MOBO. Unless the original boot drive was booting from the wrong SATA port in the first place, it is better (and simpler) to just swap the new drive in place of the original one.

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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Why don`t you use Diskgenius ? If I was you, I`d like make uefi usb boot storge , change the boot order from my motherboard , then enter the diskgenius , clone the full disk to new one . 

Don`t forget make a new MBR for your new hard drive.

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Just copy old disk to new disk using minitool partition wizard free version, then connect new disk only (disconnect old disk) and see whether it is bootable. If the new disk is bootable, you can connect both disks, start computer, choose to boot from new disk (there should be a Windows boot manager which allows you to choose a system/disk to boot), and finally format the old disk for data use. 

If there is no Windows boot manager, you need to change boot order in BIOS. For how to change boot order, you can google how to change boot order plus your computer or MB type

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I'm using Macrium Reflect for years and it always work. BUT I noticed once that I have problem with one of my copy, so even if you can copy system while running, I do not recommend that. It's not a big problem, because with Macrium Reflect you can create bootable WinPE env and boot this program from USB, so your source system will be not in use while copying.

 

The only you must do before using Macrium Reflect, is prepare your drive (initialize as GPT or MBR, depends on original HDD format) and that's it.

 

First boot should be made with new, single drive for rearrange drive letters. If you prefer - you may even delete every entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices after boot.

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5 hours ago, homeap5 said:

...The only you must do before using Macrium Reflect, is prepare your drive (initialize as GPT or MBR, depends on original HDD format) and that's it....

One problem that can occur with cloning is if you try to clone an MBR disc to a GPT disc (or vice versa), the GPT disk will revert to MBR (or vice versa). This is a problem only on discs over 2TB (technically, 2.2 TB).

Jeannie

 

As long as anyone is oppressed, no one will be safe and free.

One has to be proactive, not reactive, to ensure the safety of one's data so backup your data! And RAID is NOT a backup!

 

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