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Drive Cloning


stalfos81

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Posted

Anyone know of good cheap to free software for cloning a disk drive? My 1TB Hitachi seems like it's in the final stages before complete failure. Western Digital Black (same size) will be here tuesday to replace it. I suspect drive failure over a ram failure, because once something is actually loaded it goes rather smoothly. Just loading in itself, for rather small mundane files, takes forever. If this doesn't fix the problem I'll have to maybe replace my ram. Or purchase a new copy of windows for a fresh install. Current install is what came with the HP.

Posted

Thanx. I picked AOMEI Backupper. Wonder how long it will take to clone 365GB of games and porn on a failing drive.

 

It can take ages or forever.

I did have one 60 gig old drive it took 12 hours :P

Posted

So far , it has a maximum speed of less than 200KB/s. So will take approximately 1 to 3 months lol. I suppose I should bite the bullet, buy a new copy of windows, redownload all my mods software and games, and rebuild the mods I had as my own from scratch again. I wonder which would be more tedious.

Posted

hehe. I know the feeling.

But if you already have one copy of Windows you only need the serial numbers. Dont you have them on one small ticker or so?

I think you can DL one new copy of your windows from Microsoft if you have one valid copy.

 
Posted

Was the copy that came with an hp machine. Didn't have any documentation about the code. Only valid disc i still have is XP lost the code for that a long time ago. So I bought 7 pro and will try to salvage smaller bits from the old disk, rather than the whole thing. But now I'll make use of smaller hdd I have and back up shit, lol. On a side note, rather clumsy posting here from a windows phone.

Posted

Ok.

One HP I have some HP disks laying here, and serials. But no HP :(

 

Yes you can try that. Try to salvage your user folders, that is the important folder. All that you have in your Steam folder, do Steam have one copy for you.

I guess the other games you do have disks and so on.

 

You should use one smaller disk for Windows and one another disk for your games/documents and so on.

Not hard to do. If it crash you will have your documents/games/photos and so on safe.

 
Posted

Most games are from steam or gog.

 

Oh yeah I have jellybean. On a floppy disk. Need to put it on a USB stick since many systems don't use floppy drives anymore. Including my own. Besides I'm going to 7 pro from home premium. I could get my XP key back. Have no interest or use for getting vista back lol.

Posted

Have 7 pro installed on the new drive now. Slowly resinstalling games from steam. Managed to salvage most of the edited or altered modes from the old hdd. Most likely will download the rest again, unless it's a mod that has been removed (damn nexus) Then I'll either forget it or retrieve from old disk if it's an essential one.

 

My internet maxes out at 3 Mbps (ropughly 356 KBps. But the hard drive transfer rate from the old Hitachi is comparable to dial up. If at all. So if the mod is a rather large one and no longer available anywhere.. I guess it's gone forever. I can recover most mods from other games from even older disks, where the mobo failed first.or redownload them.. if I can find the mods I want for dragon age: origins again, or DA2.

Posted

Just a quick response towards the topic, 

 

I have had 2 Boot drive failures since the beginning of the year (both Western Digital) Note:this post isn't meant to start a pissing match about brand names.

 

This last one was at it's end when I was frantically trying anything to get my non-backed up models and mods off before failure.  I had tried all the recommended cloning software out there with no success.  Then I did something I have never done.. prob ever.. 

 

Opened up the box of my new Sea Gate 3TB drive and Read the directions. :) yeah i was desperate.

 

By doing this I found that Sea Gate has it's own cloning software called DiscWizard.  It only works with a Sea Gate drive but I must say, even though the directions lacked substance in most part. It worked seamlessly.  Did a first clone of 1.5TB of data from a 2TB WD failing drive in about 6 hours and new cloned drive worked first boot without a single issue.   Could this be luck?  who knows but figured it might be helpful.  

 

I know the feeling/terror of a failing drive very well so good luck. 

 

ReZ

Posted

Oh I was aware before purchase. 

 

But here are my specs.. 

 

3 Sea Gate drives, one 2 years old, one 13 months old..and this new one. no issues.

 

3 WB drives past year and a half.. paper weights. (I will mention all where purchased at Best Buy)

 

1 Hitachi 1TB external.  Paper weight, "included added trauma from losing Months of models"

 

Again not getting into a brand name pissing match although I knew people would anyway. That is what people seem to live for these days. 

 

So I will say what I have learned from this is. No matter what brand name it is BACK UP EVERYTHING.. And then Back up the backup even though it is time consuming. 

 

 

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