Best software to clone OS

[Keesler]

Hey all I'm playing on getting a bigger SSD than my current 120gb I was wondering what the best software to clone the OS and programs would be thanks!

[m0k]

just put both drives into another system either via sata cables internally or using an external dock 
and then copy and paste

works everytime.

if you dont want to do that, you can use acronis. ive used it once but it took two tries to get it right

[theanimun]

or you could go with the free equivalent, MiniTool Partition Wizard

[foolishlywise]

If you have a Western Digital drive, you can get Acronis TrueImage free (but it'll need a WD drive to work). Used it before, worked perfect. 

[Julian5]

acronis

[AshleyAshes]

6 hours ago, mok said:

just put both drives into another system either via sata cables internally or using an external dock 
and then copy and paste

works everytime.

if you dont want to do that, you can use acronis. ive used it once but it took two tries to get it right

You can't copy and paste an OS drive to another.  That only copies the files on any given file system partition.  You would need software to CLONE the drive, it's boot sectors and all partitions.  It's totally doable but it's not 'copy and paste'.

That said, plenty of dual (or more) drive docks have their own built in clone functions.

[m0k]

15 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

You can't copy and paste an OS drive to another.  That only copies the files on any given file system partition.  You would need software to CLONE the drive, it's boot sectors and all partitions.  It's totally doable but it's not 'copy and paste'.

That said, plenty of dual (or more) drive docks have their own built in clone functions.

ive done it..... lol and it worked...
plugged my old boot drive and new ssd into a second system onto its mobo. and just copied everything over. 

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, mok said:

ive done it..... lol and it worked...
plugged my old boot drive and new ssd into a second system onto its mobo. and just copied everything over. 

You didn't by chance keep your 'old boot drive' as a secondary drive after the fact, did you?

[m0k]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

You didn't by chance keep your 'old boot drive' as a secondary drive after the fact, did you?

i wiped it and use it as a storage drive

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, mok said:

i wiped it and use it as a storage drive

In the same system though right?  Guess where your boot record is.

You can NOT copy and paste the boot sector by hitting CTRL+X and CTRL+V in Windows.  But you can totally have the boot sector on one drive and then have it find it's OS on another drive.    Your install would break if you unplugged the old drive.

[m0k]

1 minute ago, AshleyAshes said:

In the same system though right?  Guess where your boot record is.

You can NOT copy and paste the boot sector by hitting CTRL+X and CTRL+V in Windows.  But you can totally have the boot sector on one drive and then have it find it's OS on another drive.    Your install would break if you unplugged the old drive.

ive booted without this second hdd before
when i was doing a fresh reinstall of win10 the second hdd was unplugged

[AshleyAshes]

So SINCE doing that, you then reinstalled the OS...  ...Yeah, that would fix it.

 

So, basically, you created a situation where your MBR was located on a secondary storage drive and that drive had no OS.  Where as your OS drive has no MBR and was unable to be initiated since the OS's MBR was located on the other drive rather than the OS drive.  So you had NO idea that you screwed this up.  You THEN reinstalled the OS which would naturally write a proper MBR/GPT to the OS drive, correcting your problem.  You just had NO idea you made the problem or even fixed it.  So you clutzed your way around a big screw up, that is impressive but still, you can NOT actually copy and paste a whole windwos install from one drive to the other unless you're going to basically ACCIDENTLY keep from screwing it up by keeping the old drive in the system for the OS to boot after it finds no boot information on the OS drive.  (Your BIOS almost certainly was failing to boot the drive you set as the first boot drive and then found the boot sector with useful information on the second drive).

 

...But yeah, no, you can't copy an entire OS with copy and paste because you will be pretty fucked if you then reformat or remove the old drive.

 

(I ran into this issue myself when I demirrored a RAID1.  Surprise, only ONE drive has the MBR for Windows and it was NOT the one I wanted to keep in the system.  Took me MONTHS to figure it out because I kept the old drive in the system unmounted because I had no use for it.)

[theanimun]

1 hour ago, AshleyAshes said:

...But yeah, no, you can't copy an entire OS with copy and paste because you will be pretty fucked if you then reformat or remove the old drive.

also, as most software that allows you to clone the drive requires a restart of the computer to have every bit of data cloned

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, theanimun said:

also, as most software that allows you to clone the drive requires a restart of the computer to have every bit of data cloned

Well I'm assuming we're talking about using a separate machine with it's own OS to copy from one drive to another.  There are tools that can basically run their own program on boot, do the job, then reboot into windows, so that you can run it off the system itself.  But it's totally a LOT easier if you're using a discrete system with it's own OS that can freely access source and target disc

[theanimun]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

Well I'm assuming we're talking about using a separate machine with it's own OS to copy from one drive to another.  There are tools that can basically run their own program on boot, do the job, then reboot into windows, so that you can run it off the system itself.  But it's totally a LOT easier if you're using a discrete system with it's own OS that can freely access source and target disc

most USB bootable linux drives fall under the 2nd part, and the OP never stated how many machines they had usable, i had only suggested a free alternative to a $40 USD product