Replacing PC - which software

[mc2fool]

I'd recommend a slightly different model of mounting kit. I.E
https://www.amazon.co.uk/DEEPFOX-Intern ... tdGY&psc=1

Why?
Well it comes with cables and you will need a spare set when you clone the drive.

Won't I also need to start off with a SATA to USB cable to clone to drive hanging externally?

Arb.

Only if you clone it externally.

I wonder if you could post a bunch of photos of the inside of your PC? The simplest (and cheapest) option, if possible, would be to simply unplug the connector(s) going into your DVD drive and plug them into your SSD, then do the clone, and then replace the HDD with the SSD, both physically and connection wise, and replug the DVD connector(s).

If that's possible then you don't need to buy anything*, other than the SSD itself. Of course, it requires that the connector(s) going to the DVD are the same as go to your HDD, hence the request for photos. (I say connector(s) because SATA connections have two sections, power and data, and sometimes they're both in one connector at the drive end and sometimes two separate ones).

If that's not possible then you might still be able to clone it internally, but it will require that your motherboard has a spare SATA slot free. You may still not need to buy anything if your PC builder anticipated the possibility of adding another drive and left ready-to-plug-in cables in it, otherwise you'll (temporarily) need some as shown in that Amazon listing. Again, photos would be good.

If none of that's possible then there are two more options, one being that you get a USB->SATA cable and do the clone externally. I have one of these that works fine: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B011M8YACM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title.

The other, which would be my preferred option (as I've done it twice when drives failed on me) and was suggested by Bree above, if you already have some external storage, either a (big enough) USB drive or a NAS, would be to use Macrium Reflect (free version) to do a full system image backup to the external storage, create a recovery CD/small USB stick, physically swap the failing HDD with the SSD, then boot the PC off of the recovery drive and restore the image backup to the SSD. The advantage being that if anything goes wrong you still have a full backup of the system.

* You don't actually need a mounting kit for the SSD. They're such that you can just tape/blu-tac/cable tie them down.

[servodude]

Well, I woke up this morning thinking "yes - I can do this!".

Then I looked at the Clonezilla site and realised I'm out of my depth at the moment:

"1. About Clonezilla Live

Clonezilla Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86/amd64 (x86-64) based computers. Clonezilla SE (Server Edition) has been developed from 2004, and it is used to deploy many computers simultaneously. It is an extremely useful tool, however, it does have several limitations. In order to use it, you must first prepare a DRBL server AND the machine to be deployed must boot from a network (e.g. PXE/iPXE). "

Which Godzilla do I need? what on earth does all that mean? I need a DRBL? and Network? PXE? and the only GNU I remember was a song by Flanders and Swann.
I thought I'd just download a magic program and that would be self contained and simple.
One look at their Live Docs makes me realise think suicidal thoughts. It's just another language altogether which you only acquire by much practice and there's an assumption that you know where to start before they tell you where to start. In other words they assume you are already half way up the mountain.


Arb.

Believe me you can do it.
It's nowhere near the monster that you think.

Of course there are commercial versions out there.
Macrium is popular, but they are stopping giving it away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl93_8ACKco

Yeah.
Big deep breath and concentrate on what you're doing; which is really just copying from A to B

It would be worth having a look at what software comes with the cloning kit - it might be easier to use than clonezilla which is a bit of a beast

[chas49]

Moderator Message:
At the OP's request, I've moved this to the Technology Board as the discussion is now a bit wider (chas49)

[Urbandreamer]

Moderator Message:
At the OP's request, I've moved this to the Technology Board as the discussion is now a bit wider (chas49)

Many thanks for that. I know that I've been having issues not suggesting "improvements" or experiments, which would be inappropriate on the original board.

[Urbandreamer]

"1. About Clonezilla Live

Clonezilla Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86/amd64 (x86-64) based computers. Clonezilla SE (Server Edition) has been developed from 2004, and it is used to deploy many computers simultaneously. It is an extremely useful tool, however, it does have several limitations. In order to use it, you must first prepare a DRBL server AND the machine to be deployed must boot from a network (e.g. PXE/iPXE). "

Which Godzilla do I need? what on earth does all that mean? I need a DRBL? and Network? PXE? and the only GNU I remember was a song by Flanders and Swann.
I thought I'd just download a magic program and that would be self contained and simple.
One look at their Live Docs makes me realise think suicidal thoughts. It's just another language altogether which you only acquire by much practice and there's an assumption that you know where to start before they tell you where to start. In other words they assume you are already half way up the mountain.


Arb.

I found time to visit the Clonezilla website and understand your concerns. Ignore the bit about DRBL, Network and PXE. This is not needed if you are simply migrating from one drive to another.
I found this "step by step" guide, and alternatives.
https://www.minitool.com/backup-tips/cl ... o-ssd.html
Since you have a dodgy drive ignore the instructions on shrinking the "volume".

I'd like to plug Linux at this point.

Once you have cloned your machine and got it working you can buy a cheap second hand hard drive and feel absolute confidence that you can easily return to your current working system.
This is about the worst way to experiment with Linux, but one that you can have the most confidence in.
Simply create yet another clone, then install linux on it as dual boot.
As you are experimenting you can use a second hand drive as you will backup data and were it to fail you simply fit the good HD that you are currently preparing.

Re GNU, it's the free software federation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Project

[Breelander]

Well, I woke up this morning thinking "yes - I can do this!".

Then I looked at the Clonezilla site and realised I'm out of my depth at the moment.....

Believe me you can do it.
It's nowhere near the monster that you think.

Of course there are commercial versions out there.
Macrium is popular, but they are stopping giving it away.

Actually no, Macrium have stopped posting links anywhere on their website to download it, but Reflect Free v8.0 is still available from their download servers, if only you know where to look.

The Reflect Free Download Agent is here: https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v8/ReflectDLHF.exe

[Arborbridge]

I'm not being ungrateful by not replying for a day or two - just other things are pressing.

Thank you for the recent encouragement. I'll get back to this later today, most likely.

Arb.

[BullDog]

What he's suggesting sounds most like replacing the existing drive with a newer bigger SSD - by "cloning" it, which normally just means it contains exactly the same data, in the same places, but with more capacity (like buying a new bookcase and just putting all the books back on it in the same order)

That would (normally) work as the computer just wakes up with it's hard drive being bigger (only issues really result from choosing the wrong SSD or format to use)

Clonezilla is a free Linux distro that allows you to do this cloning
- you put it on a USB or Cd and boot from it with the new empty drive also attached
- then you tell it (via a clunky dialogue) which drive you want as the source and which as the target (and this ladies and gentlemen is still "twitchy bum time" no matter how often I've done it - as getting it backwards is fatal) then off it goes copying

After it has finished you have two drives with the same stuff on them and you physically replace the old one with the new

It's not hard - but it can be a bit daunting if you've not done it before

Well, I woke up this morning thinking "yes - I can do this!".

Then I looked at the Clonezilla site and realised I'm out of my depth at the moment:

"1. About Clonezilla Live

Clonezilla Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86/amd64 (x86-64) based computers. Clonezilla SE (Server Edition) has been developed from 2004, and it is used to deploy many computers simultaneously. It is an extremely useful tool, however, it does have several limitations. In order to use it, you must first prepare a DRBL server AND the machine to be deployed must boot from a network (e.g. PXE/iPXE). "

Which Godzilla do I need? what on earth does all that mean? I need a DRBL? and Network? PXE? and the only GNU I remember was a song by Flanders and Swann.
I thought I'd just download a magic program and that would be self contained and simple.
One look at their Live Docs makes me realise think suicidal thoughts. It's just another language altogether which you only acquire by much practice and there's an assumption that you know where to start before they tell you where to start. In other words they assume you are already half way up the mountain.


Arb.

I suggest a slightly different approach. If you want to migrate from a hard drive to a SSD, I suggest you go to the SSD manufacturer website. I have used Crucial SSD and been very happy with performance. At the SSD manufacturer website you will find software for the specific purpose of migrating from HDD to their SSD. You need a cable to connect the new SSD to a USB port on your computer. But then it's a few mouse clicks as the manufacturers software detects the SSD and clones the HDD to it. Then just swap out tte HDD to the prepared SSD. And it's done. I have successfully migrated Windows and Apple computers. Using manufacturer software, it's really easy. HTH.

[Infrasonic]

Which ever route you take if cloning make sure the software resolves disk collision, even some of the bigger names may not...https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=disk+ ... nt=gws-wiz

I've always used Macrium Reflect for clones, backups, restores et al and never had any issues, they do resolve disk collision.
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/displ ... g+Disk+IDs

[Arborbridge]

Yeah.
Big deep breath and concentrate on what you're doing; which is really just copying from A to B

It would be worth having a look at what software comes with the cloning kit - it might be easier to use than clonezilla which is a bit of a beast

Just havign a quick scan through the posts, I noticed this "cloning kit". What is that? Was it mentioned previously - I may have missed it.

Arb.

[Arborbridge]

NOTE:

Update;
Samsung SSD now on order. Picking up Saturday.
Samsung migration software downloaded.

Arb.

[BullDog]

NOTE:

Update;
Samsung SSD now on order. Picking up Saturday.
Samsung migration software downloaded.

Arb.

Good luck with the migration. Can't go wrong with Samsung (or Crucual for that matter) in my admittedly fairly limited experience. We migrated my son's gaming machine to a Samsung SSD last year.

[1nvest]

For the older software/systems that I still run, I opted to clone them into a virtual hard disk, qemu/virtual machine style, booted snapshot style, where any changes are simply thrown away (so repeated boots boot back into the exact same image as before). Booting such older OS/systems as virtual machines on newer hard/software and they run quicker than they used to, even though its virtualised. In some cases you may have to set the system date to a historic date, pretend its 1995 (whatever) again or otherwise some programs may throw a wobbly. Just make sure you keep disconnected backups of the vHDD's as fall-backs for when you do screw up.

I run *nix, haven't used Windows since XP days, but for Windows it looks like you can clone a installed system into a virtual HDD using methods such as indicated here https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-a- ... e-windows/

I also use cli (command line interface) rather than gui for my virtuals, within which I can set the qemu virtual machine to have whatever cpu, ram, etc. I prefer, so imagine the gui options would also cater for similar. You can even set a virtual machine to use a different cpu, or have more cpu's and ram than is actually available on the host system. Best would likely be to define the same cpu and ram in the virtual machine as the actual machine that the current OS runs under.

[servodude]

Yeah.
Big deep breath and concentrate on what you're doing; which is really just copying from A to B

It would be worth having a look at what software comes with the cloning kit - it might be easier to use than clonezilla which is a bit of a beast

Just havign a quick scan through the posts, I noticed this "cloning kit". What is that? Was it mentioned previously - I may have missed it.

Arb.

It's when the SSD comes with all the bits you need; enclosure, cables, software (to save you having to source them independently). There was a link to one in a post before I mentioned it

[GrahamPlatt]

May have missed it but haven’t seen mention of Balena Etcher for cloning on this thread.
It is beautifully simple!
https://balenaetcher.org/

[Arborbridge]

UPDATE:

I've bought a Samsung SSD, downloaded and used the Samsung data migration software to clone the PC. That seemed to go OK except for the following notice which popped up when it had finished:



I'm not sure how significant that is, or what it refers to. However, I just clicked on the OK and the process carried on, the PC closed down in the usual way.

As far as I know, I now have a clone of my PC on an SSD, but haven't attempted to go any further. I've just uplugged the SSD (it was connected via a USB port) and rebooted with the original (faulty) HD.

Is there anything else I need do to prepare for changing over the drives, or do I just switch off, unplug one and plug the SSD in? And will that notice above wreck the result?

I might pluck up courage tomorrow!

Arb.

[BullDog]

Is there anything else I need do to prepare for changing over the drives, or do I just switch off, unplug one and plug the SSD in? And will that notice above wreck the result?

I might pluck up courage tomorrow!

Arb.

Just swap the HDD for the SSD and turn it on. It should boot far quicker, that's it, done. Hopefully.

It might be worth googling that error message. The Samsung cloning software is probably smart enough to handle it, or it would have stopped cloning and told you why.

[Watis]

If you do experience problems booting from the SSD tomorrow, you may find the information in this article helpful, depending on whether you get an error message covered by the article:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-rebuild ... ws-2624508

HTH,

Watis

[monabri]

UPDATE:

I've bought a Samsung SSD, downloaded and used the Samsung data migration software to clone the PC. That seemed to go OK except for the following notice which popped up when it had finished:



I'm not sure how significant that is, or what it refers to. However, I just clicked on the OK and the process carried on, the PC closed down in the usual way.

As far as I know, I now have a clone of my PC on an SSD, but haven't attempted to go any further. I've just uplugged the SSD (it was connected via a USB port) and rebooted with the original (faulty) HD.

Is there anything else I need do to prepare for changing over the drives, or do I just switch off, unplug one and plug the SSD in? And will that notice above wreck the result?

I might pluck up courage tomorrow!

Arb.

Plug your ssd in....can you read It? If so, turn off and proceed to swap the hard disc for the ssd.

Be aware of potential electrostatic issues! Ideally earth yourself to your computer body. Obviously unplug from the mains beforehand.

I'd avoid touching the pins of the ssd. Hopefully it will be a case of removing a few screws, gently pulling out the HD and pushing in the ssd, held in place using the same screws.

Be gentle when pushing it in ( ). It is very easy to bend the ssd connector block. Repeat...be gentle...ensure pins are aligned before pushing...do not apply any " off axis" pressure.

[mc2fool]

UPDATE:

I've bought a Samsung SSD, downloaded and used the Samsung data migration software to clone the PC. That seemed to go OK except for the following notice which popped up when it had finished:



I'm not sure how significant that is, or what it refers to. However, I just clicked on the OK and the process carried on, the PC closed down in the usual way.

Well, as it says at the top, it refers to F:\bcdcmd.bat, which would be a batch command file that I presume runs BCDBoot which "is a command-line tool used to configure the boot files on a PC or device to run the Windows operating system". I would guess that's likely to be the last thing the process does.

So, there's a possibility that you have a full clone but without a boot configuration. Simplest would be just to swap the HDD for the SSD and try booting. If it won't then you could try swapping them back and trying the BCDBoot command manually, as per the link above, but I will defer to someone more familiar with that command to advise....

Edit: I see someone already has.