r3igninblood91

My hard drive has been making failure sounds for awhile so I decided to buy a new internal hard drive an external to back up my original internal hard drive on. This task has turned out to be a lot harder than I thought because the External hard drive only copies files I can choose like music, pictures and etc. How can I go about copying my entire internal hard drive to my external so I can transfer everything on my external to my brand new internal hard drive so that I haven't lost any data and I have my Operating System? I also want my original internal hard drive that is dying to still have all the data on it. Help plz.

wiseleo

Easy.

Use my process. When you clone back onto the new drive, it should boot like nothing ever happened. Good enough? ;)

kodi

Use the Tech Support Forum Hardware Teams recommended method (link below) this will give you a bootable clone of your hard drive.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/cont...ticles/47.html

r3igninblood91

Wow thats way to complicated for me. Isn't there any free software that can do it like in one click kinda thing. lol

MrChooks

Don't know if this is a simpler suggestion - but I just used Acronis True Image 11 Home to do what you are trying to do.

I had tried xxClonme - but couldn't get it to recognise my external HDD - so went to the latest version of Acronis. They have a free trial copy too - though as I need a reliable backup system - I sprung for the full paid version.

Anyway - have a look at the Acronis site and their detailed instructions - I am a computer goose - so if I can make it work - I am sure you can

wiseleo

If at least one of the drives is a Maxtor or a Seagate, you can download Seagate edition of Acronis (Seagate Drive Wizard) for free from www.seagate.com. It won't install if it does not detect a Seagate or a Maxtor drive.

However, all these tools are designed to work with healthy drives. If your drive is not healthy, you may have difficulty completing the process successfully, which can also lead to drive failure and increased expenses for subsequent data recovery. Whether you wish to take that risk is up to you, I thought you should be informed.

While cloning an ailing drive, please be sure to keep it cool. If you have a spare fan, you may want to point it at the drive.

My process is as safe as it gets without using dedicated hardware.

r3igninblood91

I ended up finding a program called Acronis and used its 15 day trial version. It worked well and made a bunch of 4 gig sectors on my external drive. How do I take all of those files and put them on my new blank harddrive? BTW My hard drive stopped making its usual grinding noise so I'm a bit confused if the sound problem was even the hard drive failing

MrChooks

I think Acronis have their entire operating manual posted on their web site and from memory - there was a section in there explaining how to move everything to a new computer or HDD - else you could also try Acronis tech support - they were very good when I was looking for "how to" info some time back.

P/S Even if the noise has gone - if you have the slightest suspicion the HDD has an issue - follow thru with your plan coz - in compliance with

"MrChooks 1st & 2nd Laws of Computing" -

1st/ HDDs only fail if they know you haven't got a backup, &
2nd/ The chance of a HDD failing is proportional to the 10th power of the value of the un-backed-up data on the HDD.

r3igninblood91

I couldn't find the manual but do you have any idea on how to boot on a new hard drive using the individual 4 gig files from my external drive?

wiseleo

You need to use Acronis software to reverse the process onto a new drive. You backed it up into a disk image. Acronis may have a utility to mount those images. If not, there may be oher utilities.

Remove the old drive, put in the new drive, boot from Acronis, and use the restore process to write the imaged data back onto the new drive. It should boot like nothing happened when the process is complete.

r3igninblood91

Wow I am pretty computer illiterate, how do I boot from acronis, do I install it onto my external?

MrChooks

User guide is there - 3.9Mb. log on to Acronis web site, select Acronis True image Home 11, on the bottom of the RHS of the screen (under the picture of Acronis pack, in Leanr More, click on "User Guide" and the entire user guide should download.

kodi

Open Acronis and make a bootable recovery disc, set bios to boot from cd first and then put the disc in the drive and reboot.
It will install a small program that will let you copy the data to the required drive.
Don't you wish you had used XXCLONE and saved money and time.
If you still want to use it post back for help

r3igninblood91

Thanks for all of the help and info everyone.

r3igninblood91

WOW, when I go to recovery I have no idea what to do. I did a full disk clone using acronis to my external drive now I have no idea what to do, I read the whole manual but it explains nothing, I am just super frustrated I wasted my money on a new hard drive anyway, because I turned the computer on and it still made weird sounds Can someone like walk me through this? I just need to know how to put the data on my external onto my new hard drive.

r3igninblood91

I got everything onto my new hard drive but now it seems to be even slower than my old one. Mehhhh

wayliff

not to sound critical but i saw the xxclone steps and that sounded like a great solution.
Not sure why it was not tried. Acronis is good but xxclone is free.

kodi

Please confirm that you have;
1 - backed up your data to an externel drive
2 - have purchased a new drive and have it installed as your main drive
3 - still have the old drive that may or may not be faulty

If your computer is still making noises open the side of the case and see where it is coming from

Tumbleweed36

I highly recommend the XXclone method and use that myself in my business and for personal use. It just does not get any better than that.