Copying my Harddrive to a USB?

[Distanzes]

I i'm pretty sure my Hard drive is dying right now, because my PC freezes every hour and it's slow as hell. What I was was wondering is that I have a external hard drive that connects via USB to my PC and it has about 700GB free storage and my Hard drive right now only takes up 400GB, Can I just copy my Hard drive to my external one and stop using my internal hard drive and just boot from the USB hard drive? I dont really want to buy a new internal hard drive because i'm going to college anyways so I will only be using my PC for about 3 more months.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Nope you need a new internal drive.

 

[Distanzes]

Nope you need a new internal drive.

If I go out a buy a new internal drive, how long does it take to copy over, because i'm scared my PC might freeze mid copying.

 

[ArtPog]

Just one thing before you go out and buy a new HDD or SSD...

While it is true, as SR-71 has indicated, that ordinarily you will be unable to boot to the OS from a USB externally connected drive, it can happen.

Now you would need to CLONE (not "copy") the contents of your present boot drive to the USBEHD and attempt a boot from the USBEHD. If you're lucky, (it's something of a crapshoot) the system will boot to the OS. Since there's nothing to lose by attempting this, you might want to give it a try. It sounds like you've never undertaken a disk-cloning operation before. If that is the case, do some Google research on "cloning the contents of one drive to another drive".

Understand that we're assuming all the data - including the OS - that you will be cloning to another drive is incorruptible. In other words, your present system boots & functions without problems. "If you clone garbage, garbage is what you get". Capiche?

The disk-cloning program we generally use is the Casper program, however, it's a commercial program costing $49.99. There are a number of freely-available disk-cloning programs available as you will see from your Google research. Casper does have a Trial Edition available - see - https://www.fssdev.com/products/casper/trial/

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/migrate-OS-to-SSD/
I use Paragon OS now ^

Good option if you want to try a clone.

 

[ArtPog]

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/migrate-OS-to-SSD/
I use Paragon OS now ^

Good option if you want to try a clone.

I did purchase the 4.0 version of the Paragon Migrate OS to SSD program a couple of years ago and of course used it a few times. But for a variety of reasons I wasn't thrilled with it as compared with the Casper program I've been using for many years.

However, based upon your post I accessed Paragon's site and learned there's a new version 5.0. So I ordered that version at the very reasonable upgrade price.

BTW, since I raised the issue of booting to the OS from a cloned USB external HDD/SSD...have you attempted this undertaking with any success using the Paragon program, i.e., the 5.0 version?

 

[RolandJS]

While I cannot vouch for Paragon only because I have not used Paragon, I can vouch for cloning as well as for full imaging of a source HD onto a target HD; all things being in great working order, the target HD should be ready and able to work.
Exception: If the target does not boot, one might have to mark its boot partition Active. And its OS partition Primary -- if the cloning or full imaging did not do so.