Recent Disc Cloning Experience Anyone?

[amanise]

Couple of years ago had a great experience switching our the hard drive on my old lappy for an SSD. Used Sabrent True Image. Worked a treat. So, thought I'd do my DAW, which is a DELL optiplex, bought the same SSD - hoping to repeat the process.

Now though, True Image has become something else - which doesn't work properly. I've given it a few good goes and have now given up. Thankfully with no ill effects to my DAW.

Has anyone had a recent successfully C: drive cloning experience which worked? What did you use?

Thanks in advance.

[ajay_m]

Macrium reflect free has always been my preferred solution but the vendor is retiring it soon. So I would get a copy asap. This is a real shame as free and reliable disk cloning solutions seem to be progressively disappearing.

[amanise]

Macrium reflect free has always been my preferred solution but the vendor is retiring it soon. So I would get a copy asap. This is a real shame as free and reliable disk cloning solutions seem to be progressively disappearing.

OK! Thanks - I'll get a copy and check it out.

[sonics]

I use Paragon and O&O products.
O&O DiskImage is often on sale for less than $20.
True Image is an Acronis product, which I don't use after two failures.

[amanise]

I use Paragon and O&O products.
O&O DiskImage is often on sale for less than $20.
True Image is an Acronis product, which I don't use after two failures.

Yes - thanks very much - I'll follow that one up too. True Image used to be really good!

[pk.roberts]

Another vote for Macrium; I've used it to replace several 'spinning disc' 'C Drives' with SSDs and it's behaved perfectly.
I followed the nice, clear explainer video here ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKv6D8_5LSA

[OneWorld]

I'm an evangelist for Macrium Reflect too. Been using it for years now, the free version is perfectly adequate and (touch wood) has never let me down. Dis-appointing to read the company is going to drop the product

[sonics]

By coincidence, today I upgraded my system drive, and I cloned a 500GB drive in 20 minutes using O&O DiskImage (16). No issues at all. Superb software.

[amanise]

[OneWorld]

I use Paragon and O&O products.
O&O DiskImage is often on sale for less than $20.
True Image is an Acronis product, which I don't use after two failures.

Yes - thanks very much - I'll follow that one up too. True Image used to be really good!

I bought into Acronis and it failed me a couple of times, which surprised me as hitherto it had been a trusty product, but when Win10 came out, Acronis seemed unpredictable, I switched to Macrium Free and still with it all these years later

[amanise]

I use Paragon and O&O products.
O&O DiskImage is often on sale for less than $20.
True Image is an Acronis product, which I don't use after two failures.

Yes - thanks very much - I'll follow that one up too. True Image used to be really good!

I bought into Acronis and it failed me a couple of times, which surprised me as hitherto it had been a trusty product, but when Win10 came out, Acronis seemed unpredictable, I switched to Macrium Free and still with it all these years later

Yes, its a shame when they lose their focus and make a bodge of things. I'm still weighing things up. One of the issues I need to mull over more is the SSD itself. I got a Samsung EVO (which is what worked so well on my lappy). I just had a go in Samsungs 'Magician' disk management utility just for the hell of it- and that failed to copy the boot sector too. Reading the blurb on that it suggests that these SSD's don't like RAID mode too much. My laptop was a Lenovo - but my DAW is a Dell. The Dell Bios is set to boot up disks in 'RAID on' mode. I'm wondering if this is the problem underneath and I'm being fooled by my own brain into thinking it's duff cloning software. If it is - I think I'm going to have to abort the whole idea and just stick with a PC that takes a while to boot up. I don't want to change the BIOS boot mode and end up with blue screens all over the place.

[sonics]

You can get around that by, for example, using another boot disk. Set up another system, set the bios as you need, and then clone the old system drive to the new. (That's three drives connected to the system.) You can also do this by booting from a CD or USB stick.

[amanise]

You can get around that by, for example, using another boot disk. Set up another system, set the bios as you need, and then clone the old system drive to the new. (That's three drives connected to the system.) You can also do this by booting from a CD or USB stick.

So, a basic OS on a bootable stick with the cloning utility on it and run it from the stick. Worth a go!
Thanks!

[OneWorld]

You can get around that by, for example, using another boot disk. Set up another system, set the bios as you need, and then clone the old system drive to the new. (That's three drives connected to the system.) You can also do this by booting from a CD or USB stick.

I do a similar sort of thing but have those slide in/out disk caddies. Even though I make an image, I alsom clone a hard disk (well actually it's SSD, which are quite cheap these days) which I update from time to time and have that as a spare drive ready to slot in if restoring from an image doesn't work. I have only ever had to use it a couple of times over the years, but glad I had it to hand

[James Perrett]

You can get around that by, for example, using another boot disk. Set up another system, set the bios as you need, and then clone the old system drive to the new. (That's three drives connected to the system.) You can also do this by booting from a CD or USB stick.

So, a basic OS on a bootable stick with the cloning utility on it and run it from the stick. Worth a go!
Thanks!

There used to be a program called the Ultimate Boot CD. Basically it would create a Windows Pre-Installation Environment with all the utilities you needed for system management. It was a lifesaver in the old days but I don't know if it still exists...

Yes it does! https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It looks slightly different to the old one but probably just as useful.

[amanise]

You can get around that by, for example, using another boot disk. Set up another system, set the bios as you need, and then clone the old system drive to the new. (That's three drives connected to the system.) You can also do this by booting from a CD or USB stick.

So, a basic OS on a bootable stick with the cloning utility on it and run it from the stick. Worth a go!
Thanks!

There used to be a program called the Ultimate Boot CD. Basically it would create a Windows Pre-Installation Environment with all the utilities you needed for system management. It was a lifesaver in the old days but I don't know if it still exists...

Yes it does! https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

It looks slightly different to the old one but probably just as useful.

Some of those descriptions take me back! Thanks James!