possible to clone my os drive?

[russell morris]

my ssd just crapped out on me, sometimes it doesnt start , also whdn it does its painfully slow. ive been using my hdd as a slave drive as well as a place to store documents. i was wondering if there was a way for me to clond my ssd to my hdd without formatting it?


sorry foe the thpos i suck at typing on a phone

 

[Brighttail]

Most cloning software does just that, clone one drive to the other, which means you are going to lose any data on the drive you are writing to. DO you have a friend with an external you can back up your HDD, then clone ssd to HDD and use the external to get your backups?

 

[Solandri]

my ssd just crapped out on me, sometimes it doesnt start , also whdn it does its painfully slow. ive been using my hdd as a slave drive as well as a place to store documents. i was wondering if there was a way for me to clond my ssd to my hdd without formatting it?

I assume the HDD is nowhere near full and has enough space for a partition the size of the SSD? Download and install MiniTools' Partition Wizard.
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

That should let you repartition your HDD. Shrink the size of the existing data partition to make room for a new partition slightly bigger than your SSD. If the HDD's partition is on an extended partition, you'll have to shrink that too. Note: Repartitioning can cause data loss if something goes wrong. Be sure you have a backup of your data on an external drive before you do this.

If your SSD is so unstable it's not safe to repartition, one of the menu options in Partition Wizard should be for making a boot CD (my version is fairly old, so they may have removed that option). Once you have the CD, put it in your computer and boot off of it. That'll give you access to most of Partition Wizard's functions without Windows getting in the way.

Now you should have enough space on the HDD to clone the SSD to a new partition. Partition Wizard may allow you to clone the SSD - I dunno, I've never had to use it for cloning. If not there are a variety of free cloning tools out there. Clonezilla, EaseUS, and Paragon used to have free tools for cloning.

Please note that merely copying the SSD's Windows partition is not enough. Windows 7 usually sets itself up with a small boot partition. This and the boot manager need to be copied as well, which cloning will do. If you can't clone and can only copy, you may be able to get the system working again by copying the SSD partition, removing the SSD, booting off a Win 7 install DVD, and doing a repair on the HDD.

As SSDs are usually much smaller than HDDs, I've always advocated setting up HDDs this way when first installing the SSD. That'll save you from downtime specifically in cases such as this. Every month or so, copy the SSD's Windows partition to the HDD's Windows partition to refresh it. If the SSD should ever die, all you have to do is remove it and boot off the HDD. Mail the SSD in for a warranty exchange, when you get the replacement clone the OS from the HDD to the SSD, and you're back in business.