Drive To Drive Copy
- Thread starter vijay1700
- Start date
Yes, there ought to be, but I can't say for certain as I haven't used that program for a very long time if ever. But first, take a back up of your original 60GB (or whatever size it is) drive. Then use Drive Image XML to restore the image to the image to your drive. If you look at your USB flash drive, what's there: something encoded, or a direct copy of the original ?
When you say 'copy onto my laptop' what exactly do you mean ? Restore the 'image' back onto you old drive....
I'd use a blank drive, much larger capacity than, but compatible with, your original, and clone the original to that. Connect the large drive to a USB port on your computer. I'd use Disk Copy (free) from Easeus. Make a CD with this on. Boot from the Disk Copy CD to the first stage of Disk Copy, and connect the larger drive to the USB port. Select sector - by sector copy, and proceed. After a fair while, a couple of hours maybe, the large disk will have an identical copy of the original on it. Now, in disk management, or some other third party program, extend the copied disk partition to make it much larger. Then power down and swap the original for the larger disk in your laptop, power up and you've got a lot more disk space. Keep the original drive safe as you might need to go back to it if anything happens to your 'new' disk.
Doh!
6.March.2017
I have got another idea:
1. Install (new) Windows 7 from a DVD onto laptop HDD.
2. Install some partition manager and make needed partitions than can accommodate to copy C Drive of my PC, which I have copied onto 64 GB Pendrive.
3. Install Drive Image XML and do Drive-To-Drive copy again from Pendrive to the New Partition I created.
4. Boot from the Copied Version and delete the Newly Installed Windows 7 Partition.
I think this will do - Anyhow, thank you very much for your answer
1. Install (new) Windows 7 from a DVD onto laptop HDD.
2. Install some partition manager and make needed partitions than can accommodate to copy C Drive of my PC, which I have copied onto 64 GB Pendrive.
3. Install Drive Image XML and do Drive-To-Drive copy again from Pendrive to the New Partition I created.
4. Boot from the Copied Version and delete the Newly Installed Windows 7 Partition.
I think this will do - Anyhow, thank you very much for your answer
Vijay,
Your proposal may not work, because you may find that you are unable to boot from the partition containing the 'image' of your original HDD. First check that you have an identical copy - clone of the original - not some encoded image, though you may (should) be able to reconstitute the original onto the hard disk partition with Image XML if this is the case.
Second, you may still not be able to boot from that partition (this where my knowledge runs out) as I thought that the boot sector of a HDD was always sector 0. This sector would occupied by the W7 installation, so you would not have a sector 0 to boot from in your partition. However, it might be that each partition, or logical drive (if they're the same, I'm not sure), anyway each logical drive has its own sector numbering, starting at 0, so you would be OK if your BIOS enables you to choose which logical disk to boot from.
On my XP system, the BIOS will not boot from an XP USB connected HDD (but might from a USB connected HDD with Linux or W7) and does not offer the ability to boot from logical disks, only discrete physical HDDs (of which my m/b supports only 2) or an optical drive (CD) [I could, it seems, boot from a 'card', I assume a PCI mounted HDD is meant, but as I don't have one that's irrelevant and I've never tried].
A further anecdote is that I have just finished cloning (for back-up purposes) a HDD (to another HDD) which had many read errors, using EaseUS Disk Copy 2.3 and it succeeded. The unreadable sectors, which I associate with bad sectors though it isn't necessarily so - again I don't know - appear as 'blank' sectors on the clone - in the same place (sector) as those on the original, so will have not lost anything you did not have when you started.. Now I have a clone of the original disk on the first part of the new disk and also a vast amount of unallocated space (80GB -> 500GB). I could swap this disk in place of the original, keeping the original in safe place as a back-up, and, using disk manager in Windows, or some other partition tool, extend the original partition of about 60GB into the unallocated space as far as I wanted, say up to 120GB and partition the remaining space as I liked.
Bear in mind to clone the new disk without potential data loss, you will need another disk the same size or bigger. If you back-up by making disk images (as opposed to clones, though in my usage a clone is a special type of disk image), you will need less space, and they may be stored on the same disk, but I would keep them separate. If the images are small enough you can store them on an optical disk. Remember to retain the original image-maker as you will need it if you ever need to reconstitute the images.
Doh!
9.March.2017
Your proposal may not work, because you may find that you are unable to boot from the partition containing the 'image' of your original HDD. First check that you have an identical copy - clone of the original - not some encoded image, though you may (should) be able to reconstitute the original onto the hard disk partition with Image XML if this is the case.
Second, you may still not be able to boot from that partition (this where my knowledge runs out) as I thought that the boot sector of a HDD was always sector 0. This sector would occupied by the W7 installation, so you would not have a sector 0 to boot from in your partition. However, it might be that each partition, or logical drive (if they're the same, I'm not sure), anyway each logical drive has its own sector numbering, starting at 0, so you would be OK if your BIOS enables you to choose which logical disk to boot from.
On my XP system, the BIOS will not boot from an XP USB connected HDD (but might from a USB connected HDD with Linux or W7) and does not offer the ability to boot from logical disks, only discrete physical HDDs (of which my m/b supports only 2) or an optical drive (CD) [I could, it seems, boot from a 'card', I assume a PCI mounted HDD is meant, but as I don't have one that's irrelevant and I've never tried].
A further anecdote is that I have just finished cloning (for back-up purposes) a HDD (to another HDD) which had many read errors, using EaseUS Disk Copy 2.3 and it succeeded. The unreadable sectors, which I associate with bad sectors though it isn't necessarily so - again I don't know - appear as 'blank' sectors on the clone - in the same place (sector) as those on the original, so will have not lost anything you did not have when you started.. Now I have a clone of the original disk on the first part of the new disk and also a vast amount of unallocated space (80GB -> 500GB). I could swap this disk in place of the original, keeping the original in safe place as a back-up, and, using disk manager in Windows, or some other partition tool, extend the original partition of about 60GB into the unallocated space as far as I wanted, say up to 120GB and partition the remaining space as I liked.
Bear in mind to clone the new disk without potential data loss, you will need another disk the same size or bigger. If you back-up by making disk images (as opposed to clones, though in my usage a clone is a special type of disk image), you will need less space, and they may be stored on the same disk, but I would keep them separate. If the images are small enough you can store them on an optical disk. Remember to retain the original image-maker as you will need it if you ever need to reconstitute the images.
Doh!
9.March.2017
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