Need to transfer my complete HD to a replacement - please advise.

[dud]

Fellow ATers ...

I have an older Opteron-based system with an old 250 GB hard drive. The system has BSODed three (3) times this week when playing the same game. I have a replacement 1 TB drive that I would like to "cut-and-paste" an image from the 250 to the 1TB to return the system to "normal" until I replace the system completely during the winter.

Request advice from fellow ATers as to how to transfer an exact image of the 250 onto the 1TB. Thank you so much ...

 

[Fallen Kell]

"Clonezilla Live" is your friend.

Decent tutorial series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5TSbTIapVQ

 

[Ketchup]

Todo Backup has worked for me.
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm

 

[postmortemIA]

Acronis 2014 is easy to use as well. It will handle auto sizing partitions if you got more than one

 

[Charlie98]

I like Acronis as well... boot into the disk and clone them outside of Windows, however.

Just understand... if there are corrupt files on the old HDD, that bad information will be transferred to the new disk as well... you may have to repair/reinstall, etc...

 

[cholley]

there are free tools from most drive makers for cloning your drive, just need to have the correct brand drive connected.

make a good backup of your important stuff, in the event you need to do a clean install.

blue screen could be caused by a lot of things, this is almost like replacing the engine because your car stalls going up hill

 

[Steltek]

there are free tools from most drive makers for cloning your drive, just need to have the correct brand drive connected.

make a good backup of your important stuff, in the event you need to do a clean install.

blue screen could be caused by a lot of things, this is almost like replacing the engine because your car stalls going up hill

+1

What are the specific BSOD code(s) are you are seeing? If you haven't done so, try installing something like Whocrashed to interpret the dump files and determine a possible cause. You could have a bad driver or a legitimate hardware problem involving components other than the hard drive.

Also, have you run a diagnostic test on the hard drive to check if it is actually failing before replacing it? All of the hard drive manufacturers offer diagnostic software. If you are still running the original Dell software on the machine, it has built-in diagnostics you can run as well.

 

[dud]

I want to thank everyone who replied to my thread. This is what I know at the moment:

1) The PC, while aged, runs very well. It BSODs only when running one (1) specific program (World of Warships) which I installed 3 months or so ago. The problem only just started occurring about 3 weeks ago.

2) My drive is a WD2500KS so I downloaded diagnostic SW from WD's site. I ran the SW and received an error:

"06-Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 65 (Error Log Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 1!"


I am prepared to uninstall WoW, defrag then reinstall if need be. What does the forum think?


Thank you ...

 

[Bubbaleone]

I want to thank everyone who replied to my thread. This is what I know at the moment:

1) The PC, while aged, runs very well. It BSODs only when running one (1) specific program (World of Warships) which I installed 3 months or so ago. The problem only just started occurring about 3 weeks ago.

2) My drive is a WD2500KS so I downloaded diagnostic SW from WD's site. I ran the SW and received an error:

"06-Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 65 (Error Log Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 1!"


I am prepared to uninstall WoW, defrag then reinstall if need be. What does the forum think?


Thank you ...

Attempting to image a file system plagued by disk errors is an exercise in futility. First, boot your Windows install media into the repair environment, then open command prompt and run chkdsk with these switches:

chkdsk C: /x /v /r /b

(Note: if you have more than one partition/volume, set focus and run chkdsk on each one. If you're unsure, use diskpart to determine volume letter assignments. Remember that X: is the letter assigned to your Windows install media so don't make the mistake of uselessly running chkdsk on X: ).

When chkdsk has finished, the verbose switch enables you to read whether or not any bad sectors were detected, or any other serious file system errors such as errors in the volume bitmap or free space being incorrectly reported. Write that summary down for later reference before rebooting to the desktop.

This absolutely will NOT cure a failing drive but performing this procedure first will give you the best chance of being able to successfully image your current system, regardless.

.

 

[Ketchup]

Welcome back Bubbaleone! Good advice, as usual.

 

[dud]

Attempting to image a file system plagued by disk errors is an exercise in futility. First, boot your Windows install media into the repair environment, then open command prompt and run chkdsk with these switches:

chkdsk C: /x /v /r /b

(Note: if you have more than one partition/volume, set focus and run chkdsk on each one. If you're unsure, use diskpart to determine volume letter assignments. Remember that X: is the letter assigned to your Windows install media so don't make the mistake of uselessly running chkdsk on X: ).

When chkdsk has finished, the verbose switch enables you to read whether or not any bad sectors were detected, or any other serious file system errors such as errors in the volume bitmap or free space being incorrectly reported. Write that summary down for later reference before rebooting to the desktop.

This absolutely will NOT cure a failing drive but performing this procedure first will give you the best chance of being able to successfully image your current system, regardless.

.

Thank you. That seems to have fixed the problem. 3 bad sectors.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Thank you. That seems to have fixed the problem. 3 bad sectors.

You're welcome... if you still want a clone of your old system, don't wait long to image that drive because three bad sectors can very rapidly become total loss of all your data. Your drive is failing.

.

 

[dud]

You're welcome... if you still want a clone of your old system, don't wait long to image that drive because three bad sectors can very rapidly become total loss of all your data. Your drive is failing.

.

What technique/software do you recommend for this? I have a 1TB drive to image to. Thanks again ...

 

[dionasaur]

I'll have to agree that Acronis seems to have been the quickest and easiest way for me to image a drive and transfer it over if you don't have the patience/time to reinstall everything

 

[Steltek]

You should be able to download a free version of Acronis 2014 from the WDC support website for your hard drive (it will work as long as at least one of the drives in your system is a Western Digital). Macrium also offers a free for home use version of Macrium Reflect, and others have provided links to software that will work equally well.

I personally prefer to clone drives outside of Windows using a bootable CD or flash drive created by the imaging software as it eliminates Windows-related problems. The software should allow you to increase the partition size up to include the additional space on the drive. If it doesn't, you should be able to do it from Windows disk management or download a free partitioning utility.

A Windows recovery CD is also a very useful thing to have in case you need it to fix a bad boot sector on the clone.