> "Would cloning the defective drive to another new drive, then swap it out work? (This is my bootable drive)."

Yes, I do this all the time. I use Acronis TrueImage but you can use any drive clone program. The key is to clone the entire drive including the boot sector and not just the partitions. This also might be an opportunity to move to an SSD.

> "P.S. I've heard about programs called spinrite and another called HDD Regenerator can restore your HD (and work better than S.M.A.R.T) Any one use them?"

That was back in the day when hard drives were an investment. Hard drives are so cheap, I wouldn't even bother with anything like this. If the drive is failing, get rid of it!

~jr

We use Spinrite (from Gibson Research) often and it's amazing how many drives it's made readable again. It's nearly miraculous.

However, we never trust one of the fixed drives to continue to be usable. So, as soon as Spinrite is finished we use Ghost (from Norton/Symantec) to copy the drive image to a new drive. Then we archive the old drive in storage labeled as an emergency backup, just in case we ever have troubles with the new drive.

Tom, just curious, but would the Windows 7 function back up the entire drive, or only the Win7 partition?

+1 ~jr

I had that kind of trouble too once, thankfully got Acronis (my version is from WD) and all OS state saved.

~JR, would moving to SSD still working? because I assumed everything will be different, and Storage driver (HDD/SSD) will be different too!
I had trouble on my system#3 2 months ago, thankfully still under warranty of LAST day! So I still got the replacement, but after that I change to SSD, considering this is mobile for field editing. I restart all installations here.

It will clone the complete drive. (note, one can have more that one partition on a hard drive) The nice thing about it is it creates a virtual hard drive file. You can always go in and see exactly what's on it and even use it as a virtual mounted drive right from within windows. Watch the video at the link. It's pretty straightforward. Just make sure you create a bootable restore or have an installation disk. You'll find the option in the backup program. Just make sure you have network path and the admin rights to get into your network storage.
tom

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/back-up-programs-system-settings-files#1TC=windows-7

> "would moving to SSD still working? because I assumed everything will be different, and Storage driver (HDD/SSD) will be different too!"

When I moved my last HDD to SSD I just replaced the drive, booted from CD, and restored the HDD backup image to the SSD. The storage driver shouldn't change because you are still using the same storage chip, it's just the media that has changed. I didn't have any issues. I've done this on both my Mac and my PC with just cloning drives and haven't had any problems.

Paragon has software that is specifically designed to migrate to SSD's. I believe it allows you to shrink partitions to match dissimilar drive sizes.

~jr

"The key is to clone the entire drive including the boot sector and not just the partitions. This also might be an opportunity to move to an SSD."

If you use an independent boot loader then you don't need to image the entire drive... just the partitions. The advantage to this is that you can install your OS's on any partition of the right size (or bigger) and still have it boot. You can also rearrange the order of your OS's on the drive if you wish.

I like this method best because it allows me to keep a complete OS restricted to a partition. If I need for what ever reason the install and run another complete copy of windows, I simply copy the image to another partition on the drive and the boot loader will the give me a choice as to which os to boot to.

The problem with the hard drives is once they start to fail, they slowly fail again, and again, and again, and again until you install a new drive. I get great pleasure in smashing the defective drive outside with a sledge hammer over and over again to vent my frustrations until the drive is no longer a recognizable electronic device.
JJK

Also note that some cloning programs want a clean drive to clone. It's better to take care of bad drives ASAP. Compared to the first 40 meg I bought for 400 bucks, drives are dirt cheap. Why fool around?

tom

Acronis experts
Recently used acronis to clone a system drive. It did the job perfectly right down to the unique disk ID. Found this out when I tried to boot to the new disc with the original drive still in situ. Bios rejected the new drive.
Got round this by using 'Diskpart' and incrementing the disk id.
Is it possible to clone using Acronis but leave the recieving disc id unchanged?
My guess is probably not as it defeats the definition of clone

This would not effect the OP as that disk is destined for scrap

Geoff

That's the wonderful thing about only imaging partitions. You don't have to worry about drives.

I have had luck with Acronis using this procedure: Install Acronis, create your boot usb thumb (or dvd as the case may be), remove the system drive and put it in a usb dock. Install the new drive, run the Acronis boot thumb (or dvd) you created, then clone from your usb dock to the new drive. Reboot.

And then, the worse case scenario I ever had was cloning a system drive using xcopy. It works! Just don't ask me the parameters anymore ;-)

tom

Even if you image the drive, you will have to reinstall "some" programs. Beginning with Vista, the programs look for a hardware checksum. If it's different, it asks for at least a serial number, at worst a fresh install. That is in addition to the indexing, which imaging preserves.

Be sure to pop your hard drive out of the case before you image it, letting plenty of cool, circulated air surround it.

Thanks for the replies....This is why I don't want to image the drive but to clone it bit-by-bit.
I was a little sloppy at keeping my all my serials in one place over the years, so I don't want to swap drives only to find out some apps won't run anymore.
It looks like a true clone of the drive is the way to go without re-installing anything.

I also installed GOTD (giveAwayOfTheDay) apps thru the years and it's a one time install.

I think I'll go the acronis way, clone, swap and hope for the best. May get a SSD drive while I'm at it.

BTW: How fast would a SSD give me?
My boot-up time in Windows 7 is about a minute. Naked vegas V12 (from the splash screen to an empty project) is about 11 seconds.

Julius,

You will be amazed how fast the SSD will be able to start your system compared to the HDD.
Of course this depends on your system and the drives you use.

My system starts up within 10-15 seconds.

My OS runs on: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB.
I wouldn't use cheaper SSD's my data is too valuable.
Even though I make regular HDD clones of the OS drive.

Recently I have swapped my SSD with the HDD clone just to try it out, and it took about a minute to start (around 6x slower). That could vary depending on the HDD you use. But still I can't imagine using a HDD for the OS anymore.

I use 'EaseUS Todo Backup Free 6.5' and it works great for cloning the OS drive.

VMP

Both my computers feature a pair of SSDs, and I have set up Casper to weekly perform an incremental clone of the main drive to the second drive. It takes only minutes to perform.

If the main drive failed for any reason, all I need do it swap the connectors from the failed drive to the backup drive and Windows will boot and run as if nothing has happened. If the main SSD failed badly enough so that it could not be detected (happened once), the BIOS automatically goes to the backup drive anyway.

Geebax,

How would you know if one of the SSD's are malfunctioning if the BIOS automatically goes to the backup drive anyway.

VMP

Please enlighten, what's the difference between a drive image and a clone?
I understood them to mean the same thing; an indexed image (such as iso or img), rather than a non-indexed "backup."

Regarding the actual data: none.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2029832/backing-up-your-entire-drive-cloning-vs-imaging.html

Actual cloning is the process I described using Acronis above. Transferring directly from one drive to another, making a exact copy.

An image is like a huge zip and ultimately transplanted to the final drive.

tom

[I]How would you know if one of the SSD's are malfunctioning if the BIOS automatically goes to the backup drive anyway.[/I]

Very good point, I guess you would only know the next time the Casper clone was to run, it would not find the drives.

Mind you, it has to be a catastrophic failure for the BIOS to do that, such that it cannot find any evidence that the drive is present. But, having said that, how do I know this? Aha - my first SSDs were OCZ drives, probably the worst drives ever made, and one of them failed in that fashion.

I only noticed it because I happened to see the boot up and only one drive was present. I was very relieved to see it boot up on the other drive without a hiccup.

Since then I have expunged all traces of OCZ drives and now use either Samsung or Sandisk.

be aware that if your mb (most newer boards) uses uefi bio's and you use either windows own imaging, or an old 3rd party software clone / imaging tool, you might just find yourself up the proverbial creek..

apparently you can happily image with win 7 (don't know about 8) using uefi, but on trying to recover an image will throw up an error message along the lines of, you need regular, not uefi bios. sort of catch 22.

if anyone has a SIMPLE solution to this i'd love to read it. meanwhile i am using the free version of reflect which is supposed to work happily with uefi bios.

i found this very useful:

http://windowsforum.com/threads/ueif-and-image-recovery.187262/#post-602845

I think that may apply when you make an image, but a disk clone is indistinguishable from the original, and on my latest PC built on a month or so ago, you can happily exchange disks without any issues.

Clonezilla is free cloning software. Not super intuitive, but really good. If interested just search for some tutorials on how to use it.

I also use Acronis. The incremental backups are really a good idea.