CompuGeeks: Replacing a boot drive in Win7?

[tomteriffic]

There was a time and an OS when I could perform this in my sleep. And there was a lot of sleep involved as it took forever. But that was long ago...

My current workhorse machine's hard drive seemingly suddenly filled up to the point of exploding. I really didn't notice it getting all that full, but there you have it.

I need to replace it/clone it/make it just like it was only with more space. There has to be a straightforward way to do it in Win7, or there is some reasonably easy equivalent way to do a bit perfect clone? My neighborhood digital cowboys are great, but it can take several days for them to get to it, and I can't really afford that kind of downtime.

Anyone?

[mathman]

I use ghost to do this years ago but haven't done it to pc in a while.

[velorush]

There was a time and an OS when I could perform this in my sleep. And there was a lot of sleep involved as it took forever. But that was long ago...

My current workhorse machine's hard drive seemingly suddenly filled up to the point of exploding. I really didn't notice it getting all that full, but there you have it.

I need to replace it/clone it/make it just like it was only with more space. There has to be a straightforward way to do it in Win7, or there is some reasonably easy equivalent way to do a bit perfect clone? My neighborhood digital cowboys are great, but it can take several days for them to get to it, and I can't really afford that kind of downtime.

Anyone?

One little thing you might check: if you're using a Symatec for virus protection, there is an occasional issue where the software kind of goes berserk creating the log file and writes itself gigantic.

Lots of if's here, but "suddenly" and "filled up" brought a sense of déjà vu - our email server did that a few times before we switched to a different security package.

[Mitch]

IIRC, last time I cloned a disk, I used DiskPatch.

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/DiskPatch.htm

[jettster]

I just replaced the main drive on my Windows 7 Pro machine with a Samsung ssd 850 pro drive. It came with Magician software that cloned the drive and went smooth as silk. Course the SSD solution is not cheap but the performance increase was quite substantial. As mentioned previously, Ghost used to be a good solution but I haven't used that in years so can't say if it's still a good solution or not.

[aknapp]

One little thing you might check: if you're using a Symatec for virus protection, there is an occasional issue where the software kind of goes berserk creating the log file and writes itself gigantic.

Lots of if's here, but "suddenly" and "filled up" brought a sense of déjà vu - our email server did that a few times before we switched to a different security package.

+1

Symantec is a PIG!

Another thing you may want to check.... If you have a folder with more than about 40,000 files, Windows files/sub-directory indexing slows down to the point where you notice it. This happened on a Windows server a few years ago - a folder had over 100,000 files in it. As soon as it was split apart into folders with 20-25,000 files, noticeable improvement in speed.

Organize your Boobies and Booties pics into folders by month or year, and your system may speed up.

[G Man]

Get a big old terabyte external HD and dump all of your files onto it and leave the onboard HD for the OS and software.

Or, send me your old HD and your new HD and I'll use my HD Disc Duplicator at work to make a mirror image.

[tomteriffic]

Got the terabyte external (several, actually), and plan to use that as the backup if the clone-o-matic goes wrong.

Thanks for the offer, but I suspect it would take even longer than dragging the box up to my local wizards.

Been looking around and maybe Acronis is the new Ghost?

[specialk]

Good luck!

I use SuperDuper!, but I think it only works with Apple's OS. There should be plenty of solutions for you out there.

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

ETA link.

[G Man]

Got the terabyte external (several, actually), and plan to use that as the backup if the clone-o-matic goes wrong.

Thanks for the offer, but I suspect it would take even longer than dragging the box up to my local wizards.

Been looking around and maybe Acronis is the new Ghost?

Actually, Ghost is still around, (now a Symantec product,) and have released a beta of Ghost 3.0, which should go live this summer sometime. And the old version, though clunky, will work for Win7 machines.

[tomteriffic]

I had a freebie download code for Acronis that I had never used after I put an SSD in my laptop. Made use of it, RTFM'ed and it all went pretty uneventfully. I'm posting from that machine. Time consuming (as one might expect) but pretty painless overall. Thanks, all!

[Armitage]

In Windows there is System Restore and every time you do an update or install something it backs up the previous stuff. You may have it set really high and have a ton of really old files. Try to delete all but your last restore point. Space galore.

[gorch]

Take this: EASEUS Partition Master 9.1.1 Home Edition

It worked flawless.