How Do I Copy My Hard Drive To Another

One commonly asked question is 'How do I transfer everything from the hard drive on my old computer to my new computer?' If you bought a new computer, or just a new hard drive for your old computer, you'll need to transfer the files. Here's how..

I am surprised you do not suggest the possibility, for a complete copy of the entire drive, of connecting the new drive, booting any of the Linux distributions live CD, and running rsync in a console.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm sure that could work, but it's a tad geeky, wouldn't you say? :-)

How about swapping out a small SSD for a larger one. The small one has my Operating System on it as well as some programs and is getting fairly full. Or, should I just use it as is and do everything else on the 1TB HDD?

Thanks.

I simply used Macrium Reflect Free to restore an image backup of my old hard drive to my new replacement SSD drive. No hassle, no issues, no sweat and no pain. I was done in no time and the computer was up and running in about two hours from start to finish.

I have done this several time and have used the Samsung Migration Utility, Macrium Reflect and most recently Acronis a license came with my most recent PNY SSD. Acronis was the easiest ever and I was able to also use it to reuse my smaller OCZ SSD in another system.

Seems you left out copying data over to a new PC here which I thought you meant to cover? Another article maybe?

Hi,
I tried cloning my hard drive, say 500 Gb and after downloading, installing Macrium, it gave me a message , ' free version limited to 300 Gb'

So, no good.
Plus their web site today, has no comment on size limit on all versions.

If you want to copy a large quantity of files to your drive, try Tera Copy, formerly a Microsoft Toy, available at http://codesector.com/teracopy. Free for personal use, or buy pro version license. Performs multi threaded copy optimizing seeks. If a file already exists it will offer to leave alone or to copy it.

See also sync toy at https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=15155 for a versatile ways to synchronize files one way or both ways. Uses a private file to keep track of previously copied files so that only new or updated files are copied. This how I keep some backups up to date.

My internal hard drive is 1 Terabyte. I have several 8 terabyte external hard drives. About once a month I copy my Internal hard drive to an external one. Occasionally, when I am bored out of my mind, I delete duplicate files.
It keeps me occupied.. you know the old saying:
the devil finds work for idle hands

​
'said to show that you believe people who have nothing to do are more likely to get into trouble or commit a crime'
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands

I have been saved by Acronis several times over the past decades. I am puzzled though - you made no mention of the different hardware aspects of copying. Acronis refers to it as a 'Bare Metal' restoration as I recall.

Thank you for your consistently excellent articles which have been immensely useful over the years. Have you considered charging an annual subscription? What would it do for you if every person on your list paid just $10?

You did it again, Bob! Yet another in a long line of articles I define as a 'KEEPER,' by which I mean another 'Ask Bob' article I send to my Ask Bob Keeper file. There are whole lots of articles in it for sure!

Thank you, Bob.

My current notebook computer hard drive is only about 350Gb, which is small. Obviously, I want to upgrade to 1Tb or more, but while I want to resize the main partition (to as big as the new drive allows) I want to also copy the other partitions too (which normally aren't mapped as accessible, but which contain the restoration copies of Windows 10 for example). I'm disappointed that you didn't even mention this (VERY significant!) issue..!!!! How to get word on laptop.

I have used Aomei Backerupper for a number of years with excellent results. In fact, I try to clone my hard drive to an external drive every few months as insurance in case of HD failure , or virus, etc. I have also used Macrium Reflect with some success and Acronis True Image.

I began using computers in my law practice in 1976.When it became possible to partition a large hard drive, I did just that: using C as the operating system, D drive for all data, and P drive for photographs. My backup for the last two decades is an external hard drive powered by a small, precise, and totally reliable program called 'Second Copy'. Thew only things I back up are my D and P drives, automatically every night at 3 AM. I have changed computers several times over the years and after partitioning the hard drive on the new computer to C, D and P, I simply copy the fields from my external hard drive to the new machine. Each file, exactly as it was on the old machine is ready for use - uncluttered by OS files as it would be if everything was on the C drive.

Bob,

I have used Clickfree to make an image as a backup of my current WIN XP computer. I am thinking of buying a new WIN 10 computer and was wondering if I could set up a separate partition on the new computer and then transfer the Clickfree image to that partition and use it as a separate boot on my new computer (allowing all my old programs to run on the new computer)?

I used Lap Link's PC Mover in January to move data and apps from my slowly failing PC to a new one. It worked pretty much as advertised. It doesn't bring everything over--you still need to spend a few hours tweaking your new hard drive. But it was a good aid and saved a lot of time. The software says it's only good for one usage.

I agree with Bob about cleaning stuff when getting a new computer. I will create a wordpad document via C Cleaner of all the programs installed on the system which are on the C drive while on a totally different drive are all the data which then simply is installed in the new tower. Because I keep the links and the setup files for my programs in separate folders and others that come with CD's I can then choose to do an update to a program, install the one I have the setup file for or simply eliminate something not used a lot. Then of course all data files have triple BU with a couple of drives in safe locations.

'REDO Backup & Restore' is the easiest cloning software out there. I've restored both Windows &
Linux machines. It's FREE and fits on a CD/USB that you boot the computer with. Select the source and destination drives then start. That's it.

I started using AOMEI Backupper to create incremental images of my system and data drives, in the event I need to restore them. Not sure how it compares to Macrium, which does similar things.

I have been noticing that Mr. Rankin keeps silent anytime one of us groundhogs comes out of our hole and yells out 'Acronis!'. Sure, 'Friends don't recommend friends PAYware' but Acronis is the 600pound gorilla in the industry and has been for over a decade+. Sticking with Acronis also has the added benefit of being backward compatible with their older versions; allowing usability of the archives previously created by older AcronisTrueImage versions.
AND, if you own a WesternDigital HDD/SSD, you can download/use Acronis FREE of charge.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm just not a fan of Acronis. I have used it and recommended it here in the past, but the 2014 and/or 2015 versions were terrible. How to finalize imovie 2016. So I switched to Macrium Reflect and I like it a lot. That's why I now recommend it.

Thank you for the Comment, Mr. Rankin.
For security/privacy concerns; it [i][b]should [/b][/i] also be noted that encryption/passwording of the archive/image is necessary.
Some of the FREEware versions of such programs do not have this feature.

I used Macrium, following your and others' recommendation, for a couple of years. I have now been refunded by them, after a complex and difficult analysis of my system to help Macrium find out what was wrong (and at first being treated as an imbecile by someone who could not understand their own programs, let alone Windows: happily not all their staff are like that). Macrium, even upgraded to V7, did not read all files properly, had trouble accessing system root, had pop-ups asking to install the same start-up utility 4 or more times a day, missing icons .. We parted by mutual agreement, though I have a perfectly standard system on 1 disk of W7 Ultimate which they could not come to grips with (no RAID, Sandbox, or whatnot). Have gone back to free AOMEI, which, if fewer bells and whistles, has always worked perfectly.