[SOLVED] What Software clones Internal SSD to External SSD?

[johnatanasoff]

Hi all,

Samsung Data Migration does an exact clone of an existing internal drive to another 2nd internal drive. But not to an external SSD!
This means Windows Boot Manager boots the 2nd internal drive; and all programs and files are there!

What software allows me to do an exact clone of my laptop's internal SSD, to external SSD; and let Windows Boot Manager boot the external SSD?

 

[USAFRet]

Hi all,

Samsung Data Migration does an exact clone of an existing internal drive to another 2nd internal drive. But not to an external SSD!
This means Windows Boot Manager boots the 2nd internal drive; and all programs and files are there!

What software allows me to do an exact clone of my laptop's internal SSD, to external SSD; and let Windows Boot Manager boot the external SSD?

Booting from an external is NOT a trivial process.
No matter what cloning tool you try to use.

Why are you wanting to do this?

 

[TerryLaze]

What software allows me to do an exact clone of my laptop's internal SSD, to external SSD; and let Windows Boot Manager boot the external SSD?

Unless your external SSD is on the same SATA controller an exact copy will not work because it will expect to be on that sata controller and not on a usb or any other type of controller.

What you want to do, create a bootable copy of your working os on a usb, is called windows to go, look it up on google/youtube.

If you just want a bootable backup, get any cloning tool that has a bootable iso or usb for download and create an image of your drive on the same media.

 

[johnatanasoff]

Unless your external SSD is on the same SATA controller an exact copy will not work because it will expect to be on that sata controller and not on a usb or any other type of controller.

What you want to do, create a bootable copy of your working os on a usb, is called windows to go, look it up on google/youtube.

If you just want a bootable backup, get any cloning tool that has a bootable iso or usb for download and create an image of your drive on the same media.

Yes all i need is a (failover) backup. If something goes bad with the internal ssd i will boot from the external one and everything will be there!

Then i can copy it back to the internal ssd again and be back to business...

But what software does this well? That's what i need to know? I've never done this!
I've created bootable pen drives with rufus etc.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes all i need is a (failover) backup. If something goes bad with the internal ssd i will boot from the external one and everything will be there!

Then i can copy it back to the internal ssd again and be back to business...

But what software does this well? That's what i need to know? I've never done this!
I've created bootable pen drives with rufus etc.

For THAT, no problem.
Macrium Reflect does exactly this.

I use it daily, it is the basis for my entire backup routine.

My main system does an Incremental image every night, each physical drive individually.
Other systems in the house on different schedules.
They write to my big NAS box, but that could just as easily be to an external drive or two.

Any questions, just ask.


And yes, I've had to use this to recover after a dead drive.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[johnatanasoff]

For THAT, no problem.
Macrium Reflect does exactly this.

I use it daily, it is the basis for my entire backup routine.

My main system does an Incremental image every night, each physical drive individually.
Other systems in the house on different schedules.
They write to my big NAS box, but that could just as easily be to an external drive or two.

Any questions, just ask.


And yes, I've had to use this to recover after a dead drive.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

Perfect. Macrium Reflect is exactly what i need!
Was difficult to get to this solution as people were mixing things up...

What i need is a bootable exact copy of my entire OS and all programs and files on my external SSD.

Looking forward to start using the software.
Thanks a lot for chiming in!

 

[USAFRet]

Perfect. Macrium Reflect is exactly what i need!
Was difficult to get to this solution as people were mixing things up...

What i need is a bootable exact copy of my entire OS and all programs and files on my external SSD.

Looking forward to start using the software.
Thanks a lot for chiming in!

Clarification...the Image is not directly bootable.
Rather, you use that Image to apply back to a drive. Either a new drive, or on to replace what is there.

 

[TommyTwoTone66]

I believe Macrium Reflect would be able to restore an image to the USB drive which would then be bootable. It would be interesting to see if Windows would actually work under those conditions though... As someone else mentioned the OS would expect to be on a SATA or NVMe controller not a USB controller. Whether that actually matters though is another question... I might try this out...

 

[johnatanasoff]

Clarification...the Image is not directly bootable.
Rather, you use that Image to apply back to a drive. Either a new drive, or on to replace what is there.

https://blog.macrium.com/techie-tuesday-image-or-clone-e6be74abb089
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When you Clone a hard drive, you can boot from the target disk on the same system with the state of your computer at the time you undertook the clone. But Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive; this is a restriction imposed by Windows. You can clone to a hard drive installed in your computer or to a hard drive installed in a USB hard-drive Caddy. If you clone your system disk to a USB connected external drive then, to boot your clone the physical disk must be removed from the USB caddy and attached to your Motherboard SATA port.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have this one https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/portable/t7/

So due to windows restriction, the clone won't ever be bootable?

 

[USAFRet]

Booting Windows from a USB is completely different than an internal drive.
Clone or otherwise.

So...

You write the Images out to the USB.
In case of need to recover the OS drive, you boot from a Macrium Rescue USB.
Recover, tell it where the Image is, and where the target drive is.
Wait until it is done.

Boots up exactly as the day you created that Image.

The RescueUSB is created under Other Tasdks - Create Rescue Media...
I have a USB stashed in the bottom of my case, so it doesn't get lost or used for something else.

If NOT the OS drive, the function is accessible directly in the Macrium client, no need to boot from that Rescue thing.



Also, Clone and Image are two different things.
A clone is for swapping to a new drive right now.
An Image is for backups, to potentially be used later.

 

[johnatanasoff]

Booting Windows from a USB is completely different than an internal drive.
Clone or otherwise.

So...

You write the Images out to the USB.
In case of need to recover the OS drive, you boot from a Macrium Rescue USB.
Recover, tell it where the Image is, and where the target drive is.
Wait until it is done.

Boots up exactly as the day you created that Image.

The RescueUSB is created under Other Tasdks - Create Rescue Media...
I have a USB stashed in the bottom of my case, so it doesn't get lost or used for something else.

If NOT the OS drive, the function is accessible directly in the Macrium client, no need to boot from that Rescue thing.



Also, Clone and Image are two different things.
A clone is for swapping to a new drive right now.
An Image is for backups, to potentially be used later.

Thanks for putting things out clearly!
In case i get a blue screen i can't recover from, to boot the image i must have the Macrium Rescue thing, correct?
I can have a partition in the SSD dedicated for it. Less hardware and more simple.
Will work right?

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for putting things out clearly!
In case i get a blue screen i can't recover from, to boot the image i must have the Macrium Rescue thing, correct?
I can have a partition in the SSD dedicated for it. Less hardware and more simple.
Will work right?

Not sure if you can use a partition on an SSD, and then recover to that same SSD.
Much much safer to have that Rescue on a small USB.

 

[johnatanasoff]

Not sure if you can use a partition on an SSD, and then recover to that same SSD.
Much much safer to have that Rescue on a small USB.

Macrium Rescue D: partition would be on my external ssd and then grab the backed up image from the C: partition and put it back on the internal laptop ssd and replace/wipe-out, what's there.
But only testing will say. And no big deal having an extra thumb drive for the purpose!

My confusion so far which you clarified before, is that the image cannot be directly booted (which i thought could)!
My understanding is that there is no software allowing this to happen from a USB connected SSD...

Doesn't matter, as doing what i mentioned above gets the laptop back to business anyway.
But means until i install a new ssd on the laptop (in case of failure), i won't be able to work.

 

[USAFRet]

Macrium Rescue D: partition would be on my external ssd and then grab the backed up image from the C: partition and put it back on the internal laptop ssd and replace/wipe-out, what's there.
But only testing will say. And no big deal having an extra thumb drive for the purpose!

My confusion so far which you clarified before, is that the image cannot be directly booted (which i thought could)!
My understanding is that there is no software allowing this to happen from a USB connected SSD...

Doesn't matter, as doing what i mentioned above gets the laptop back to business anyway.
But means until i install a new ssd on the laptop (in case of failure), i won't be able to work.

Needing a new drive only comes into play in the rare case of a physical drive fail.

I have over a dozen various SSD's in systems in the house here.
Some in continuous operation since 2013.
Only one of them has physically failed.

But this backup routine also protects your data against all other forms of loss. Virus, malware, accidental deletion, etc, etc. That is far more common.

 

[TerryLaze]

Macrium Rescue D: partition would be on my external ssd and then grab the backed up image from the C: partition and put it back on the internal laptop ssd and replace/wipe-out, what's there.
But only testing will say. And no big deal having an extra thumb drive for the purpose!

It doesn't need to be a partition, if you take an image it's just a normal file that can be on the same partition as macrium.
With windows 10 you can add this image to the boot menu using BCD commands and you can boot to it but there can be issues doing this with the main one being that you might screw this installation up as well so you would end up with bad windows, so it's not really recommended.

 

[TommyTwoTone66]

And to be brutally honest, disk imaging in 2021 is a total waste of time.

Most of the data on your computer is very easily re-downloaded from the internet or installed from USB when you install windows.

Game installs? On Steam
App installs? Ninite.com
Game saves? In the cloud.
Chrome bookmarks and extensions? Synced to your google account.
music? On spotify
Videos? On YouTube and Netflix

Backing up your entire boot drive to an image was very popular 10-15 years ago when an entire OS reinstall could take days, and all your software was on discs and CDs that took an age to read etc.

These days you can install a fresh copy of windows 10 in about 20 minutes on a fast PC, and the rest of your stuff can be redownloaded in a couple of hours on a fast internet connection. Restoring from an image takes FOREVER, much longer than just doing a reinstall, not to mention all the time and effort you go to creating the image in the first place.

I just make backups of my personal files and documents, anything I can’t easily download. I’ve had to restore my PC from scratch a few times (normally because I bought a new system) and it takes me 2-3 hours to get back to exactly where I was.

 

[USAFRet]

And to be brutally honest, disk imaging in 2021 is a total waste of time.

Well, some of us have other things besides games and utube videos, and applications not available at ninite.

CAD/Video/Photo applications.
Plug ins for those
Several VM's
Configurations and connections between the various systems in the house
And of course, personal files that go back to the previous century

Full drive backups take exactly 0 seconds of my day. That's what automation is for.
The systems and Macrium know where and when to do it. All hands off.
And full drive backups means I don't miss anything. "Oops, I forgot that folder..."

But...no matter how you do it...just do it. Whatever works for you.
My procedure works for me.

An image of a 1TB drive, recovered across the house LAN to a new drive takes all of 90 minutes. Yes, I've done this.
If your thing takes "FOREVER"...you're using the wrong tools.

 

[johnatanasoff]

And to be brutally honest, disk imaging in 2021 is a total waste of time.

Most of the data on your computer is very easily re-downloaded from the internet or installed from USB when you install windows.

Game installs? On Steam
App installs? Ninite.com
Game saves? In the cloud.
Chrome bookmarks and extensions? Synced to your google account.
music? On spotify
Videos? On YouTube and Netflix

Backing up your entire boot drive to an image was very popular 10-15 years ago when an entire OS reinstall could take days, and all your software was on discs and CDs that took an age to read etc.

These days you can install a fresh copy of windows 10 in about 20 minutes on a fast PC, and the rest of your stuff can be redownloaded in a couple of hours on a fast internet connection. Restoring from an image takes FOREVER, much longer than just doing a reinstall, not to mention all the time and effort you go to creating the image in the first place.

I just make backups of my personal files and documents, anything I can’t easily download. I’ve had to restore my PC from scratch a few times (normally because I bought a new system) and it takes me 2-3 hours to get back to exactly where I was.

Agree with USAFRet reply.
I use cloud, and the time to download what i need can be quite long! Plus as it's a synced connection files can get messed up.
Having a full image without nothing missing on my external ssd gives me peace of mind. It simplifies everything; and no double files and so on!

A fresh copy of windows means bye bye to your programs and saved settings on them!
To me, only when absolutely needed! And the rescue can de done overnight while i sleep.

 

[geofelt]

Samsung data migration WILL copy your C drive to an external USB connected ssd.
In the event of failure, you would need to install that copy in your pc and boot from it.
Of course, your pc needs to be able to install the backup hardware and change the boot order to it.

Up to a point, this can serve as backup.

But, I think external backup is better done with purpose built utilities that can create an image and subsequently do incremental updates.