drive cloning and how it affects programs

[swety111]

Hi all,

 

My current pc set up (running Windows) is typical HDD for mass storage/SSD for OS & Important programs, a few months ago my seagate 2TB hard drive started making the clicking noise of death and it didn't bother me too much because I knew that it was unlikely to fail straight away but it eventually got to the point where I didn't want to take the risk anymore so I bought a 3TB Toshiba drive, I know that I can't just copy and paste everything and expect it to work flawlessly so I looked into drive cloning. I've never attempted drive cloning before so I would like to know if all of the programs and games will work (I know the windows registry plays a big part in that) using the cloned drive or if I will need to reinstall everything (I would really like to avoid having to do that), also what cloning software would you guys recommend for this, I've heard Easeus a few times but I'm really a fish out of water here

 

Many thanks

[Electronics Wizardy]

It will work fine and nothing will be effected. Id personally use dd on a linux live cd and clone, then boot into the other drive and expand the partition.

[AdmnPower]

You could try a tool like Acronis 

 

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/#section_key-features

 

Since it sounds like you're only planning on cloning your data drive and not your OS drive you aren't likely to run into any issues. Sometimes cloning your operating system disk can cause quirky issues but most of the time it works well. 

[swety111]

On 7/7/2016 at 9:30 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

It will work fine and nothing will be effected. Id personally use dd on a linux live cd and clone, then boot into the other drive and expand the partition.

I would like to avoid using linux for anything if I can help it, I have no experience with it and I really don't want to mess something as important as my data but thanks anyway 

[swety111]

8 hours ago, AdmnPower said:

You could try a tool like Acronis 

 

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/#section_key-features

 

Since it sounds like you're only planning on cloning your data drive and not your OS drive you aren't likely to run into any issues. Sometimes cloning your operating system disk can cause quirky issues but most of the time it works well. 

thanks, I'll give Acronis a look  its reassuring to hear that it will be fine and yes I'm cloning just my data drive, my OS is on my SSD

[AdmnPower]

I should point out that if the drive is clicking it may take quite a while to clone. It's also possible that there could be some data that will be corrupted once it's cloned over due to the failing drive. If it doesn't clone properly the first time you can always try it again.