Replacing PC - which software

[Urbandreamer]

I emailed the guy who used to build and maintain the PCs for my company to see if I could drag him out of retirement. The answer was in the negative, but he commented:
"the way I'd cope with your issue would be to clone the existing drive to a larger SSD then it'll run exactly as before. Clonezilla would do that and it's free."

I wouldn't have much of a clue how to translate that into practice, but I'm sure it would be easy to some of you computers whizzes.

I'm not clear if he means buy another machine and do that, or what. In any case, I thought just cloning programs wouldn't work because they need to be "installed".

Arb.

If all you want is what you have, maybe slightly faster and with a larger hard drive it's the way to go.

With older hardware using Clonezilla is relatively easy. It's what was suggested earlier using Macrium, but using Free and Open Source software.
The clue is in the term "Clone". It's a "clone" of the original hard drive and can simply replace the original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gTJw8ehkVc&t=28s
Clonezilla at about 10min.
https://clonezilla.org/
https://etcher.balena.io/

[mc2fool]

I emailed the guy who used to build and maintain the PCs for my company to see if I could drag him out of retirement. The answer was in the negative, but he commented:
"the way I'd cope with your issue would be to clone the existing drive to a larger SSD then it'll run exactly as before. Clonezilla would do that and it's free."

I wouldn't have much of a clue how to translate that into practice, but I'm sure it would be easy to some of you computers whizzes.

I'm not clear if he means buy another machine and do that, or what. In any case, I thought just cloning programs wouldn't work because they need to be "installed".

Arb.

No, he means making an exact copy of your existing HDD onto an SSD and then replacing the HDD in your PC with that SSD.

The advice is (probably!) exactly right and what was suggested by kiloran in their first reply. The "probably" is 'cos of the why rather than the what.

You say in your OP "I'm going to have to bite the bullet and either buy a new PC or replace my hard drive sometime soon". Why? Is the hard drive developing errors? Is the system running too slowly for you now? Is it filling up? Etc....

If replacing the HDD with an SSD is what's best for you (rather than buying a new PC), then the how will depend on the specs of your PC and what you also have available. Best is if you can post the make and exact model of your PC so we can look up the specs. Also, how much you've used of the existing disk, and if you have any external storage available to you, e.g. a USB drive, and its size. Then we'll be able to advise ...

[servodude]

I emailed the guy who used to build and maintain the PCs for my company to see if I could drag him out of retirement. The answer was in the negative, but he commented:
"the way I'd cope with your issue would be to clone the existing drive to a larger SSD then it'll run exactly as before. Clonezilla would do that and it's free."

I wouldn't have much of a clue how to translate that into practice, but I'm sure it would be easy to some of you computers whizzes.

I'm not clear if he means buy another machine and do that, or what. In any case, I thought just cloning programs wouldn't work because they need to be "installed".

Arb.

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

[Breelander]

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and either buy a new PC or replace my hard drive sometime soon.

What I'm anxious about is that I've been told that even replacing my hard drive with a modern SSD could mean I have problems installing my beloved ancient Office Suite from CDs (bought as a "competitive upgrade" around 2007, I'd guess). Apparently, W10 or W11 if installed will refuse to load a "legacy" product of this type.

Installing an unsupported older version of Office shouldn't be a problem. You may need to uninstall it from the old machine though, so that your key doesn't get rejected for being installed on too many machines. Try the key, it might work on the 2nd machine. If not, you can install Office 2007 without a key on the new PC, you get a limited time trial until you register it. Then when you know it's working you can unintall it from the old PC and enter the key in Office on the new PC.

Older versions of Office such as Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP are not certified compatible with Windows 10 but might work with or without compatibility mode.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 36cdb1936c

Your biggest problem would be reading those 'ancient CDs', virtually no new PCs have optical drives these days.

While you still have a machine that can read CDs, why not make an ISO file copy of them? You can mount an ISO as a virtual disk on any W10/W11 PC and run the setup from there. AnyBurn is a nice simple free app for creating an ISO from a CD/DVD.

https://www.anyburn.com/

I've just tested installing Office 2007 from my ISO in Windows 11, it installs and runs fine. Windows Update will even get all the Office updates for you.

[Arborbridge]

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and either buy a new PC or replace my hard drive sometime soon.


This is why I think that - a screenshot of what I get when I re-boot:-


My lack of knowledge, but this looks like it's telling me the HD is not good. I press F1 at this point and get another screen - on that one I just "ignore the changes" and carry on and the PC loads and works more or less as normal. It is slower, but mostly when it's up and running it is not much different to its old self. I get the feeling that it has to "remember" how to do particular things, but once having remembered it seems OK next time I do that same function.

The C drive has 331GB free - i.e. less than half used. All my important data is backed up externally.

Not sure if this helps.

BTW, I've discovered a makeshift way round the aggravation of taking up to half an hour to boot up (including updating anti-virus and Malwarebytes):-
I just don't turn the machine off!

Arb.

[Urbandreamer]

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and either buy a new PC or replace my hard drive sometime soon.


This is why I think that - a screenshot of what I get when I re-boot:-
My lack of knowledge, but this looks like it's telling me the HD is not good. I press F1 at this point and get another screen - on that one I just "ignore the changes" and carry on and the PC loads and works more or less as normal. It is slower, but mostly when it's up and running it is not much different to its old self. I get the feeling that it has to "remember" how to do particular things, but once having remembered it seems OK next time I do that same function.

The C drive has 331GB free - i.e. less than half used. All my important data is backed up externally.

Not sure if this helps.

BTW, I've discovered a makeshift way round the aggravation of taking up to half an hour to boot up (including updating anti-virus and Malwarebytes):-
I just don't turn the machine off!

Arb.

Right:

Immediately find out how to PHYSICALLY change the hard drive and backup your data.

DON'T WAIT TO BACKUP YOUR DATA, DO IT NOW!

Look at how to plug a second hard drive in. Either SATA cable (like the cables to the current hard drive), or USB. If it's a desktop it's likely that SATA cables is the best way to go.
Find out how to boot from USB stick.
Buy the needed hardware. Cables, USB adaptor, hard disk or SSD and small (8-16G USB stick).
Download Clonezilla.
Clone and replace your hard disk.

Ok, now you can consider buying a new PC. The URGENT thing is to avoid loosing what you currently value.

(Note I have assumed that Windows is not automatiacally backing things up to OneDrive for you. However if that is the case then identify your Microsoft account, because the backup is only useful if you can use it)

[mc2fool]

My lack of knowledge, but this looks like it's telling me the HD is not good. I press F1 at this point and get another screen - on that one I just "ignore the changes" and carry on and the PC loads and works more or less as normal. It is slower, but mostly when it's up and running it is not much different to its old self. I get the feeling that it has to "remember" how to do particular things, but once having remembered it seems OK next time I do that same function.

The C drive has 331GB free - i.e. less than half used. All my important data is backed up externally.

Yep, your HDD is on it's way out and could go totally belly up at any time, and every access to it is likely to bring that closer. So, if at all possible turn off the PC and use another device until you figure out what you're going to do.

The question for you is, if it were working fine would you be happy to spend less than £100 to install an SSD and get it back to how it was, indeed, even a bit more sprightly that it was before, and continue with it, or are you of the mood that it's probably time to get a new PC anyway?

That spec (i3-3220 @ 3.3GHz with 8GB of memory) is probably more than adequate for internet browsing and general "home office" type work, but it of course depends on what you use it for. Were you generally happy with it before? One negative is that it won't (officially at least) run Windows 11. Windows 10 support will stop in October 2025.

If you want to just change the HDD to an SSD, while you can get cheaper ones, the Samsung 870 EVOs have a good reputation. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Intern ... 02-0686124

Again, if you can post the make and exact model of your PC we can try and look up whether it'd be easiest/best to install the SSD into the PC alongside the HDD for the cloning or if you need to attach it externally to do that.

[Breelander]

I'm going to have to bite the bullet and either buy a new PC or replace my hard drive sometime soon.


This is why I think that - a screenshot of what I get when I re-boot.....

....My lack of knowledge, but this looks like it's telling me the HD is not good....

You're right, If the SMART status says 'bad' then it's only a matter of time (and probably not much) before failure. At this point I would (and have had to do for one of my own machines) make a system image of the PC, replace the HDD (preferably with an SSD) then restore the image to that. Do it ASAP. A system image (or cloning to a new drive) would mean that all your data, the installed Windows, and all its settings would be transferred to the new drive. It would be as if nothing had changed (but working faster).

[Itsallaguess]

[Here's] a screenshot of what I get when I re-boot:-

If the machine is currently already on, then I think it's going to be worth identifying the 'Windows Drives' that the above 'SATA3G_2' disk is currently providing, because there's a half-decent chance that the issue here is with a separate 'data' disk, rather than the C: drive boot-disk...

To check this, you can carry out the following steps -

1. In your Windows SEARCH box, type 'device manager' and press <RETURN>

2. The 'Device Manager' window should open

3. In the 'Device Manager' window, click the little arrow to the left of the line that says 'Disk Drives'

4. Hopefully, in that list of 'Disk Drives', it's possible to identify the ST500DM002-1BD142 drive that's showing a poor SMART status in the above BIOS window

5. If you can identify the ST500DM002-1BD142 drive in that list, right-click it and select 'Properties' from the right-click context menu

6. In the drive properties window that should then open, select the 'Volumes' tab

7. On the 'Volumes' tab, click on the 'Populate' button towards the bottom left

8. In the lower 'Volumes' area of the 'Properties' window, you should now see the WINDOWS DRIVE LETTERS that the drive with SMART issues is currently providing for your Windows machine. With a fair wind, and given that it looks like the duff drive is installed on your 2nd SATA port, then the list might not contain the C: drive, which is likely to be your Windows boot-disk...

9. Now you know the WINDOWS DRIVE LETTERS that you need to worry about, you may now have alternative options for backing up any data on those drives, that doesn't necessarily involve installing a brand new internal drive at this moment in time...

I'd be interested to hear which windows drive letters you see returned using the above process Arb...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Arborbridge]

If the machine is currently already on, then I think it's going to be worth identifying the 'Windows Drives' that the above 'SATA3G_2' disk is currently providing, because there's a half-decent chance that the issue here is with a separate 'data' disk, rather than the C: drive boot-disk...

To check this, you can carry out the following steps -

1. In your Windows SEARCH box, type 'device manager' and press <RETURN>

2. The 'Device Manager' window should open

3. In the 'Device Manager' window, click the little arrow to the left of the line that says 'Disk Drives'

4. Hopefully, in that list of 'Disk Drives', it's possible to identify the ST500DM002-1BD142 drive that's showing a poor SMART status in the above BIOS window

5. If you can identify the ST500DM002-1BD142 drive in that list, right-click it and select 'Properties' from the right-click context menu

6. In the drive properties window that should then open, select the 'Volumes' tab

7. On the 'Volumes' tab, click on the 'Populate' button towards the bottom left

8. In the lower 'Volumes' area of the 'Properties' window, you should now see the WINDOWS DRIVE LETTERS that the drive with SMART issues is currently providing for your Windows machine. With a fair wind, and given that it looks like the duff drive is installed on your 2nd SATA port, then the list might not contain the C: drive, which is likely to be your Windows boot-disk...

9. Now you know the WINDOWS DRIVE LETTERS that you need to worry about, you may now have alternative options for backing up any data on those drives, that doesn't necessarily involve installing a brand new internal drive at this moment in time...

I'd be interested to hear which windows drive letters you see returned using the above process Arb...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Thanks for the instructions. This is what is returned - I see only one Drive, that is "C", not a list.


Arb.

[puffster]

FWIW, the iHAS124 is a DVD drive. I'm not sure why it was listed before the disk drive. Maybe due to the boot order?

Regards, Puffster

[Itsallaguess]

Thanks for the instructions.

This is what is returned - I see only one Drive, that is "C", not a list.

Ah - well that's not the luck we were hoping for, as it's confirmed that the duff drive with the SMART issues is your Windows boot-drive (C), and as such it at least confirms that you need to find a replacement hard-drive as soon as you can.

Personally, given that the PC itself is likely to be fast enough for your fairly modest PC-needs (in terms of not really requiring any hard computing-power), and given that the drive with the SMART issues is a mechanical 'platter' drive that's relatively slow in terms of more modern storage-technology, I would personally go down the 'CLONE' route with a new, larger-capacity SSD drive, as I think just the fact that you'd be moving from a spinning hard-drive to a much faster solid-state drive is likely to deliver a real-world performance boost that, I strongly suspect, will convince you that you're actually running on a brand-new and faster machine anyway, and I really do mean that...

Then, later on whenever a new machine is actually required, you can salvage the new SSD drive and use it as a spare data-drive in any future PC, so I'd suggest trying that route first, before necessarily thinking that you need to go the whole-hog and buy a new machine...

I'll second the earlier recommendation of Samsung 870 EVO SSD's - a really good sweet-spot in terms of price-to-performance...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Arborbridge]

I'll second the earlier recommendation of Samsung 870 EVO SSD's - a really good sweet-spot in terms of price-to-performance...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Intern ... 86124?th=1

Would this do the job?

Would it fit in the current internal drive space?

I'm sorry I cannot post a make and model of the PC as it was purpose built by "Page Computers" who used to build the boxes for my company. Unfortunately, Keith Page has how retired - which is why I'm all at sea and grateful to all on here.

Arb.

[Breelander]

I'll second the earlier recommendation of Samsung 870 EVO SSD's - a really good sweet-spot in terms of price-to-performance...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Intern ... 86124?th=1

Would this do the job?

Would it fit in the current internal drive space?

Should be fine. I have been running one of those 870 EVO 1TB SSDs in my laptop for well over a year now, performs perfectly.

Your current drive is a 3.5" HDD, the SSD is 2.5". You'll need one of these to mount it in the 3.5" drive bay.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/General-Drive- ... B00F3QFKNS

[Urbandreamer]

Should be fine. I have been running one of those 870 EVO 1TB SSDs in my laptop for well over a year now, performs perfectly.

Your current drive is a 3.5" HDD, the SSD is 2.5". You'll need one of these to mount it in the 3.5" drive bay.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/General-Drive- ... B00F3QFKNS

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.

[Arborbridge]

Should be fine. I have been running one of those 870 EVO 1TB SSDs in my laptop for well over a year now, performs perfectly.

Your current drive is a 3.5" HDD, the SSD is 2.5". You'll need one of these to mount it in the 3.5" drive bay.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/General-Drive- ... B00F3QFKNS

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.

[servodude]

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.

Pretty much.

Probably USB to some enclosure that provides the SATA interface to the drive - but the cloning kit should have all you need

[Urbandreamer]

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.

If it's a laptop, then yes you would. Of course you also could do so with a desktop, but I really dislike using "hanging" hard disks.

If it is a desktop, they are designed with more than one, usually four, SATA interfaces. If you are really short of cables you could actually use the ones plugged into the CD, but I would prefer not to.

With a desktop you simply pop the lid, plug a SATA cable into the new drive and PC, not forgetting the power cable to the drive.
I would clone with the lid off on a table/desk.
Once the cloning is done, power off and unplug the cables to the original hard disk. You might need to swap the SATA cable to the new drive, but only machines from the dawn of time really care. Then test that the system works on the new hard disk.
Now tidy up.

Even if you decide to clone to the new drive with it hanging externally using USB, you will still need to open the PC. In my opinion the only reason to clone to a USB mounted hard drive is if you have to. It's usually slower and entails a little (not much) extra effort when working on a desktop.

PS, I'm assuming that it's a desktop as you said it was built for you.
Oh, and since you actually HAVE a CD drive, you might find it easier to try burning clonezilla to a bootable CD/DVD and booting from that, or not.

[Arborbridge]

I emailed the guy who used to build and maintain the PCs for my company to see if I could drag him out of retirement. The answer was in the negative, but he commented:
"the way I'd cope with your issue would be to clone the existing drive to a larger SSD then it'll run exactly as before. Clonezilla would do that and it's free."

I wouldn't have much of a clue how to translate that into practice, but I'm sure it would be easy to some of you computers whizzes.

I'm not clear if he means buy another machine and do that, or what. In any case, I thought just cloning programs wouldn't work because they need to be "installed".

Arb.

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.

[Urbandreamer]

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.

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