Think my laptop's hd is on the way out. Opening from sleep or boot have gotten a few 'no bootable disk found' lately. Did some kinda test the other day which I tried to redo just now but I'll be damned if I already forgot what I did, lol. It gave me a result saying basically something like 'predict future failure = true'. Looked it up and if I read right 'true' is saying there's failure coming afaict. Although in the control panel disk area, it shows the partitions as 'healthy'.

I ordered another hdd but in the meantime I'm doing a backup. I thought windows backup itself was a clone (I use a cloner on my macs) but it seems, as I just discovered, it's not.

So what can anyone recommend for windows cloning? I see there are some free ones... AOMEI, Clonezilla, Macrium, EaseUS ToDo. Any of those good?

Once I do get one to use, I take it all I'd need to do is stick the new bare drive into a usb dock and clone to it like I do on mac, correct?

Thanks

 

HI,
For me ...The EaseUS ToDo Backup is the best ...

 

paragon and acronis are nice and comfy.
I switched to paragon because its way more 'ok whatever'.
clones xbox drives and any other stuff. acronis is picky.
when booting from a linux startupsick you can use dd.
or from a windows pe stick you can even use hddrawcopy. as long ad the new drive is larger.

 

i ve been using acronis true image for years, i recommend it, you don t eve3n need the laterst version to get perfect results

 

EaseUS Partition Master. I clone my system disk once a month. Win 7.
It's very powerful for all HDD purposes.

 

Macrium Reflect (free), since I can access/browse the backup image with the Macrium mounting app (Macrium Reflect Utility Service) and extract files from there. I think Acronis can do that too, but last time (a couple of years ago) I looked, only the paid version (correct me if I am wrong), not the free WD edition (which works only If you have at least one WD HD running).

 

Macrium Reflect. The free version works fine.

 

Macrium Reflect, all day, every day. I've tried them all since the very early days of Ghost. Many of them I've run for years. Macrium saved my ass from a Ransomware attack. It got my hard drives but my Macrium backups were solid.

I don't use the free one though -- I use the full version, warez release from a certain Russian tracker.

 

I use Clonezilla generally and it works perfectly, but it might be a bit hard to understand how to use it for you, so I think you might want to take a look at Acronis True Image, Paragon Backup, or Macrium Reflect. They are just easier to use.

Since I'm on Linux most of the time, I do use command line DD a lot these days... Windows users don't know what they're missing out. Every image is just a little command away from being made or used, for free.

 

Thanks guys. You've been a great help.

 

hkjf

 

Last edited: Aug 12, 2022

I used Terabyte for years too. I also liked Drive Snapshot. Both were solid contenders.

 

iuo

 

Last edited: Aug 12, 2022

its a true disgrace that microsoft cant have a decent backup solution available in w10, a f¤%¤ OS basic need is to be able to backup. the current implementation is like dragged straight out of the wc. apple is seamless when it comes to the OS backup, the rest of their "solution" for other devices suck

but congrats on reacting in time, other-ways it would have been yet another tragic story of many around here .

find it interesting though that people still use W7, i tried it on a spare machine a while ago, and i got only problems when it came to new hardware.

 

Last edited: Jun 23, 2022

Thanks again guys. Have to confess, much of this windows details stuff is way over my head, heh. I use macs but use pc laptops for my day to day internet and hooked up to my tv to watch stuff I get online. My goal is simply to clone a new 2.5" hdd of the laptops hdd and then pop it in if and when it fails. That is the extent of my involvement with cloning.

I decided to use free Macrium and cloned a new drive yesterday. Windows has some hoops to jump through that had me scratching my head a bit. New drives come already windows formatted, usually FAT in my experience but think this one was NTFS.

First I was confused as to why the drive didn't automatically come up on the desktop or listed as as an attached drive in the computer start menu. Wound up dicking around, plugging & unplugging. Then I decided to look in the control panel disk management area and saw the new drive listed in the bottom bar graph area part, but not on the top.... just the pc's C drive was.

I'd figure I probably need to format it again for some reason, but it wouldn't let me. I started looking at what other options were available in the contextual menu and saw this thing called iirc, 'simple disk'. Googled it and figured that might have something to do with it, although what I read about it was clear as mud to me, lol.

Crossed my fingers and made it this simple disk thing. Success! Was able to re-format to ntfs, just to make sure of a proper formatting and satisfy a bit of my ocd, heh.

Now here is a question I really need answering!

While going through the cloning procedure, it wants me to assign the clone drive a drive letter. This confused the heck outta me..... the system needs to be the 'C' drive.... but if I choose the letter C, will this cause the cloning process to mess up cuz windows won't allow two C drives connected or some such windows type arcana. So I left it as 'E', which was Macrium's default choice for it.

After a successful clone, was having doubts about the choice of letter designation.... should I have chosen C instead of E?

So I googled it and again found answers that were again clear as mud and didn't find exactly the answer I was looking for.

Q:: Some responses seem to imply that it doesn't matter what letter the cloning software will designate the clone, once you remove the old drive and plug in the new clone, windows will assign it as the 'C' drive. Is this correct? Or should I re-clone and designate it as 'C' this time?

Unfortunately windows (at least 7 that I'm aware of) won't let you boot off an external usb so the only way apparently I can test the clone is to open up the lapton and plug it in... a bit of a hassle for sure. Think there's some windows wizardry work around to get a usb to boot but that stuff's way beyond me.
As pointed out, I will also make a second clone copy onto a spare usb drive as additional backup. I assume the cloning software allows for one external usb drive to be the target while another same to be the destination, if it ever came to that situation?

Much thanks!

 

Last edited: Jun 24, 2022