Cloning a hard drive

[Skatester07]

After cloning a hard drive do you need to re-install the games that you cloned on to the new hard drive? 

[VIVO-US]

Nope, it should be all good to go!  I cloned quite a few drives when we were upgrading a lot of our computers to SSDs, and once the cloning was done, I just shut off the computers, swapped the drives, turned them back on, and everything was still there and working.

[Skatester07]

Well idk what happened with mine because I did the cloning and swapped the hard drives but when I went to load up a game it tried to look for it on the old drive and couldn’t find it. And when I tried to directly load it through the new clone it would load up. Any ideas?

[VIVO-US]

Is the new SSD showing as your C drive?  If not, maybe this will help: https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-change-a-drive-letter-2626069

[seagate_surfer]

On 11/28/2018 at 9:31 AM, Skatester07 said:

Wellwon't idk what happened with mine because I did the cloning and swapped the hard drives but when I went to load up a game it tried to look for it on the old drive and couldn’t find it.

2

So it won'y load on the old drive...

On 11/28/2018 at 9:31 AM, Skatester07 said:

And when I tried to directly load it through the new clone it would load up. Any ideas?

 

But then it only loads on the new hard drive...

 

That's so weird!  When you clone a drive the same information that's on the old drive should continue to be there regardless the number of clones you do from that hard drive. If for whatever reason the old drive is no longer able to open the application/game it may be that it just got corrupted. Fortunately you just did a clone but what a coincidence that it stopped working right after it was cloned. Your problem is not normal but the coincidences are, you won't be the first one or the last one person who experiences something like this, it has happened to me before and it has happened to many people, the worst thing is when you are working with one of your customers and after attempts to fix one thing another thing fails, they blame you and is not funny trust me  but coincidences happen and they happen all the time, just reinstall the game.

[kingknightrider]

Check that the drive letters didn't get changed.

And if they did use computer management or the cloning software to change the letter back.

Can happen sometimes when cloning -if using more than one hard drive in a system.

[Mordecaidrake]

How are you guys cloning the hard drives? My SSD is completely out of space so I need to update. I've never had to clone my drive before so I'm curious what software your using.

 

Thx!

[seagate_surfer]

I like this EaseUS between the several reliable options out there:

• Clone the disk for disk upgrade, data transfer, SSD migration - EaseUS

[Lady Fitzgerald]

49 minutes ago, Mordecaidrake said:

How are you guys cloning the hard drives? My SSD is completely out of space so I need to update. I've never had to clone my drive before so I'm curious what software your using.

 

Thx!

Macrium Reflect Free. I've had excellent luck with it.

[VIVO-US]

44 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

I like this EaseUS between the several reliable options out there:

• Clone the disk for disk upgrade, data transfer, SSD migration - EaseUS

EaseUS is also my go-to for cloning.  It's always done a good job for me, and I've only ever used the free version.

[seagate_surfer]

I've also used Acronis and I like that one too, but EaseUS is always on my mind, it's what comes first when they ask me (Am I in love?):

• https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/cloning-software/