best disk to disk copy software

[1101]

Hi . Whats the current BEST old disk to new disk copying software

Something that
- can copy to a smaller disk (eg 500Gb to 480Gb )
- can cope with disk errors, will continue if read errors are encountered
- can cope with non standard partitioning, as seen on too many laptops
- will do the job on 'difficult' setups, where for various reasons most disk copy/clone software just fails

Ive some difficult PC's I need to upgrade to SSD's . Win8.1, UEFI . They are starting to P%^&%8 me off :-(
So far Active@ , older Seagate/wd/Acronos failed, newer versions of seagate/wd software fails
Win's built in imaging software (via backup) ALLWAYS works, but wont recover from image to a smaller drive , so cant use that .

I can usually find some disk copy software to work, but for some reason , not on these generic i3 PC's

Does Macrium free have a disk to disk copy function, or is that image then recover from image to new PC ?
Will Macrium image to a small HD?

cheers

[Bryan]

Have you looked at AOMEI Partition Assistant (free Program)?

[wainuitech]

Macrium is meant to do Clone Disk , but never actually tried it. I've always used the Imagining.




All the other options is does do, you can tell it to ignore bad Sectors (From Up top - Other Tasks - Edit Defaults - Advanced - tick "Ignore bad Sectors") This is from the installed program not the bootable CD.

never had any problems with any type of CPU compatibility.

Can resize the Partitions, have done so many times from 1TB drives down to 250GB SSD's Heres how: https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/di...ion+properties

[1101]

Have you looked at AOMEI Partition Assistant (free Program)?

Just tried it. It did nothing (literally)
It rebooted into PE mode to do the copy, failed instantly.

[Bryan]

oops. Sorry about that!

[1101]

Macrium is meant to do Clone Disk , but never actually tried it. I've always used the Imagining.

Ah, is that a "clone" or copy .
A clone is often a sector by sector clone , that takes upteen hours and wont work on smaller disks
But in some software, a clone is a copy: copies only data & boot partion etc

I wish they would standardize some of the terms used .

can macrium recover image to a smaller HD ?

[1101]

Im trying the macrium 'clone' now.
It has the option of only copying data , and will shrink to fit smaller drives
If this doesnt work I'll bite the bullet & clean install Win10, unfortunately that means re-setup of all the software & printers as well. And a 365 lic (Im not reloading Office2010)

I would have preferred a bootable CD option to do this, just so no locked files are missed. Beggars cant be choosers for this PC.

Im also very nervous about the Chinese disk copy/clone software: Ive been caught out when less popular software didnt copy all the doc's on a disk to disk

[wainuitech]

Ah, is that a "clone" or copy .
A clone is often a sector by sector clone , that takes upteen hours and wont work on smaller disks
But in some software, a clone is a copy: copies only data & boot partion etc

I wish they would standardize some of the terms used .

can macrium recover image to a smaller HD ?

As mentioned I haven't ever used the Clone / Copy. But I always image, and yes an image can be put back to a smaller Drive, as I mentioned I've taken a 1TB drive, imaged it, then put the image down to a 250GB SSD. What usually happens is lets say theres 6 partitions, it may bring across the 1st 4 of them, but you reduce the last one (as per the instructions in the previous link)to make room for the other two. The Image is only the size of used space, so if theres only 100GB used then the image is roughly the same.

if you're not to sure I can make up a video showing how it done

[1101]

Macrium Clone / Copy worked perfectly , it shrank to suit the smaller drive.
Was quite slow (it seemed to created shadow copies first & used that) , but it worked.

What I'd really like is software thats CD\USB bootable , that copy/clones without Win running.

Perhaps with modern bios secure boot etc that may no longer be realistic option .

[wainuitech]

Macrium Clone / Copy worked perfectly , it shrank to suit the smaller drive.
Was quite slow (it seemed to created shadow copies first & used that) , but it worked.

What I'd really like is software thats CD\USB bootable , that copy/clones without Win running.

Perhaps with modern bios secure boot etc that may no longer be realistic option .

You can make a Bootable CD from Macrium (Free) That's the one I mainly use.

Just checked and the Bootable CD does have the Clone option as well.

This is sometimes how I get the persons data back from unbootable OS's, it then makes an Image that you can open / Copy data from, or even boot from ViBoot (A VM that uses Windows Hyper-V)


Only thing I find is the CD takes a few minutes to load into Memory. When booting from the CD I always select the boot option using UEFI if the motherboard Boot Menu has it. I make the CD's from a Computer that has UEFI boot to start with that way it appears to work on others as well.

There is an option to fix the boot ( from the Bootable CD) if it fails after an Image is put back, only had it happen maybe twice in the several years been using macrium.

Then theres the Server version ( not Free) has a few more options as well. But the Free Works well for home and business.