Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
  • Best way to clone / copy a hard drive?
  • cloudnine
    Free Member

    Recently my computer broke and Ive since bought a new computer. Theres loads of photos and stuff i want off the old hard drive.

    Loads of stuff on google but any recommendation on program to use and how to do it?
    Thanks..

    bails
    Full Member

    Get a cable or hard drive caddy so you can connect the old hard drive to you new computer, as if it were a normal external hard drive. Then go through the folders to find the stuff you want and copy it onto the new computer.

    E.g. something like this.

    gobuchul
    Free Member

    What broke on the old machine? If it was the hard drive you will need to pay someone to do the data recovery for you.

    If the drive is working, you don’t need any programs just the right hard drive connector and power supply.

    There are loads on ebay

    Connect it up and it should show up as an external drive on your PC.

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middling Edition

    Fresh Goods Friday 696: The Middlin...
    Latest Singletrack Videos
    Tom_W1987
    Free Member

    Parted Magic?

    cloudnine
    Free Member

    Pretty sure the hard drive is ok.
    Just never done it before

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    OK.

    So firstly we do need to know how old the other machine was or have you take it apart and get the drive out – you may beed a torx screw set to do this or maybe just a Phillips. Obvious stuff, disconnect from power supply, remove case (1 or 2 screws at back and slode off ?) then the hard drive will be screwed into a bay probably under the CD drive, tbh getting them out isn’t my forte always seem to be a bit of a puzzle 😳 . We need to know what standard the connector is IDE (ancient and quite large with many pins ) or Sata (more likely and much smaller maybe 1.5 cm). This will tell you what USB caddy to buy, they can be as cheap as £10

    Put drive into the caddy and then connect to your machine and it should appear like any other USB stick / external drive which you can access via Explorer and copy what you want. Easy peasy 🙂

    oldnpastit
    Full Member

    If the hard drive is OK, you can also just stick it into the new computer and hook it up to power and either IDE or SATA cables. It will then show up as a second drive. Total cost zero.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    As said, if what broke was the hard drive then you may need some recovery work to get the files. Unless all that happened was the OS got messed up and it stopped booting, and then the files may be okay, just it doesn’t boot. If all this is the case, you could have got the old computer working with a reinstall.

    If not the hard drive then yes, just plug it into new computer, copy files off with Explorer.

    You can do a clone but that will copy the whole operating system and everything, which you may or may not want and you’d need a spare disc to clone it onto. You wouldn’t want to clone it onto the new computer’s hard disc as the OS will be wrong for the computer. Wrong version perhaps, almost certainly the wrong drivers. You just want the data by the sounds of it.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    What oldnpastit said. ^^

    What are you cloning it for? You already have the data.

    cloudnine
    Free Member

    Thanks for all the suggestions..

    Ive bought the cable to connect it through usb 3.0
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B019MF0UC6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    PLugged it all in but not reading the drive??
    It powers up but just gives a boot folder with bootmgr.exe.mui in it.
    Old operating system was windows 7..new one is windows 10.

    I just want photos off the drive.. and maybe a few office docs

    Either ive not connected it up properly, the drive is spangled or im a spaz..

    Cougar
    Full Member

    I’ll wager there’s two partitions on it. Ie, there will be (say) an E: and and F: drive visible in Explorer. Look at the other one.

    cloudnine
    Free Member

    😳 Thanks Cougar

    brassneck
    Full Member

    Check in Disk Manager too, just in case it’s forgotten to assign a drive letter to it

    canopy
    Free Member

    ^ good point 🙂

Viewing 14 posts - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

The topic ‘Best way to clone / copy a hard drive?’ is closed to new replies.