Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Transferring to a replacement drive needn't be difficult. In fact, prepping for a transfer can be as simple as a side effect of backing up regularly.
My hard Drive states that failure is imminent & I should replace it immediately. My questions are as follows: When I replace my hard drive, will I need to install a new operating system? Is there a way to clone my current hard drive completely including my operating system? If I am able to clone my entire Hard Drive, will I need hardware or some device to set up between the old hard Drive and the new while I do the transfer? What is the best way to save my existing files if I can't salvage my entire hard drive? Are there software programs that can help me do this?
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There are indeed programs that can help. They're called "backup programs".
While there are many, many ways to do what you're looking to do, I'm going to review what I think is the most appropriate way.
In fact, it's the very way that I just recently did exactly what you're asking about.
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First things first: start backing up. Now. Do not wait.
You are very, very lucky: most hard drive failures come without any warning. One day the drive just fails.
The fact that you're asking this question tells me that you haven't been backing up.
If you had been backing up, you would have:
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The knowledge that your existing files are there, in your backups, ready for recovery should you ever need them for any reason.
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The ability to recover even if your hard drive failed completely without warning.
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A means to transfer your entire system to your new hard disk.
If you read Ask Leo! frequently you may be tired of my constant harping on the miracle that is a well maintained backup, but I can't stress enough how important it is, and how many types of problems from which it can help you recover.
I know this for a fact myself, since very coincidentally two days before writing this article my hard drive - the primary hard drive on my primary work machine - developed a bad sector that could not be repaired.
However, I've been doing regular backups to an external USB hard drive. So no mater what, I knew that I would not lose any files or important information - only the time and inconvenience of purchasing, replacing and restoring a backup image to a new drive.
And that, quite literally was the process:
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Once I determined that the drive should be replaced I ordered a new one. (A larger one, while I was at it.)
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When the new drive arrived I installed it into my system, removing the old drive.
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I booted from my backup programs bootable rescue media and restored the backup to the machine.
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I rebooted my machine and was back in business - my operating system installed programs and files successfully transferred over courtesy of the backup
(Full disclosure: there were, of course, some additional steps I've glossed over. Conceptually, though, it really was that simple. I'll cover my experience in detail in a later article.)
The bottom line is exactly what you were looking for: having a full backup allowed me to transfer everything from my existing, failing hard disk to my replacement disk.
And that's exactly what I recommend you do: start backing up to an external backup hard drive. Use an image backup tool like Acronis True Image, which I used in my example above, or any of several others. Backup regularly: daily is common.
It's hard to overstate the number of different ways a regular backup can save you.
But this is clearly one of them.
Article C4261 - April 16, 2010
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
It's much easier than you may think to salvage your data. But the best thing to do is like Leo always "harps" about, backup, backup & backup. For those who can't afford Acronis (which is the best paid for backup software), Macrium Reflect is the best free one. And easy to use. The one included with Windows 7 is good, too. The main thing I'm saying, is that no one has an excuse not to backup. You don't have to do it every week, but it's a good idea anytime you make a system change to do so, including creating a restore point before making changes.
Posted by: Charles Tilley at May 3, 2010 7:20 PMTrue Image also offers the option to clone drives. It is faster than backing up then restoring.
Posted by: Carlos Coquet at May 20, 2010 1:32 PMOne thing about backups. They are not always right !!! Check them. Back in 1975, my data center lost considerable data and when I went to restore it from the IBM supplied backup to tape program, I found the data was corrupt. There was an error in the program !!! It took a week of analysis to determine and fix the corruption in the tapes !!!
More recently, I was creating images of a Windows 2003 Server hard disk with True Image V 8 for months. Last week, I decided to put in a larger drive and after restoring the backup image I found the drive was NOT bootable. Apparently an issue with V 8 because when I created an image with V 11 then restored it, the disk was perfectly bootable. Lucky the source drive had NOT failed !!
So, it is not a bad idea to CHECK that your back ups ARE good.
If I replace the 'failing'? hard drive with a larger one,can I simply copy my 'backup' or 'image' off my external drive straight onto the new drive and will my system and programs still be legal? If,for example, I replace my current drive(150Gb) with a different make and size (750Gb) will everthing work as normal, but with a lot more space, after I click on 'Restore my Computer' ? I'm sorry if I appear 'thick' but it's important to me that everything is legal!
14-Nov-2011
@David
Posted by: Connie at November 14, 2011 9:43 AMI is certainly possible as Leo says he did just that in the article. Make sure you get compatible hardware. Here's another good article on that:
whats_the_difference_between_sata_pata_and_ide.html
Dear Leo:Hello and thank you once again for your wise advice.I plan on buying "Acronis True Image" A.S.A.P. because I just crashed this system myself. Ouch! Foolishly I shut down a perfectly good working XP system and plugged in another Hard Drive and restarted the computer and "Boom!" Everything -blinking and ticking! Thank God I was able to restart it after alot of work.My Toshiba 8200 laptop is still down also "after" my brother in law turned off all start up items and changed the boot path options also! Bad person right? So,Back up is Imperative!Thanks again,Michka'el.
Posted by: Michka'el at May 25, 2012 11:33 AM