Cloning a new system disk from an old (not in use) system disk...

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  1. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #11

    OS and Boot sector and possibly the System Reserved volume while all that is automatically covered in a full one shot system image backup of an entire drive. Need to see Windows restored with everything still intact the system image option. Cloning is the older method used mainly by corporations before imaging softwares were developed and first seen on the consumer market.

    The advantage of imaging over cloning is being able to restore the backup image made to the source drive at a later date while cloning to the source from a clone won't work is the source drive ends up with a bad day for some reason! Cloning once finished sees the destination drive made immediately available while the image created then has to be restored to the source or other drive but can be restored endless numbers of times as long as the image stays intact without seeing any eventual corruption or comes out intact from the start.

    As for documentation every company will see it's own library of topics related to the type of products being sold. Acronis has their page with embedded videos outlining how each of the two options is done with their latest software of course. Difference between Backup and Disk Clone | Knowledge Base
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  2. Posts : 1,099
    Win 10 pro Upgraded from 8.1
       #12

    fdegrove said:
    Hi,



    Not necessarily. You only need the partitions that matter for Windows to boot and run really.
    Cloning a drive or partitions is often a waste of time. Anyhow, I read a lot of confusing stuff because of semantics really.
    The folk at Macrium have really well documented stuff on their site about all of this, well worth a read and needless to say, what a good free program that is.

    Cheers,
    Acronis 2010 through 2014 advertised that they were UEFI compliant however almost all UEFI GPT image restores and Clones failed to boot. and little no support from Acronis, there Forum was helpful but remedy's for these failures didn't happen until late 2014 and I still had a failure to boot with 2015, needless to say I move my back up routines to MR as I upgraded to UEFI. This is how I found Macrium Reflect in 2012 with my first UEFI machine.
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  3. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #13

    Sorry to hear that since some don't like Acronis 2016 at all. The word on that is bloatware! Paragon looks like the next paid for option I might go with however once the 2010 edition becomes obsolete with the next build anyways where I can only expect to be running into some UEFI issues to work out there.

    So far the only pc here with UEFI at the present is the recently bought 10 laptop that wouldn't boot from a flash drive when bringing up the boot device menu since that was created on a Legacy/Bios main build here. Need to toss UltraISO on the new laptop instead or better yet go with the latest version that likely now excludes the bootable floppy image option! Originally went with that back in 2009 before the 7 launch even.
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  4. Posts : 48
    Windows 10 ver 20H2
       #14

    The simplest and quickest method I've found is Clonezilla. It's free and much faster than most of the others. It's easy to use and takes about 15 minutes to create the image, and about the same amount of time to restore. I use it a couple of times a week so that I always have a completely up-to-date image of my Windows 10 system.
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  5. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #15

    I've heard of Clonezilla now for several years in fact but never gave that one a try! It's good to know that an alternative to MR works however! I wasn't too keen on Macrium to start with and ended up buying the 2010 Acronis TI while in a local Circuit City one night before that retail chain decided to go belly up! Walmart certainly doesn't carry softwares as far as having any local retail chain other then the Staples full retail. You can look over the information on the open source app at the sorceforge main site itself. Clonezilla - About

    That has to be quick and small software wise to be able to fit on a cd-r since you have to boot live from it. That is one of the main limitations of course while Windows orientated programs allow you to continue working in Windows while the imaging runs in the background. Acronis takes about 34min. for a full image on the 1tb OS drives here when there are video files and recently other recording included. Once I get done with a few things on the 7 side however most of that will be gone along with the need for a few apps still only able to run on 7.

    A full image however as you know yourself doesn't get time consuming anywhere near what you can run into with cloning at times. It helps being able to verify an image backup comes out intact however.

    Went to grab the AMD64 alternate which covers UEFI and ended up with the same download I already had being Partition Wizard! Clonezilla download
    Last edited by Night Hawk; 20 Mar 2016 at 01:51. Reason: additional comment
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  6. Posts : 48
    Windows 10 ver 20H2
       #16

    My drive is also 1TB. That Clonezilla version also boots in UEFI mode. I even have a complex image that is Windows 10/Linux Mint dual boot that imaged and cloned back to the PC drive perfectly.
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  7. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #17

    Typically the open source apps are found to be less likely to fail since they are written to the basics not being bloated up with various extras! Yet at the same time the larger Windows softwares can provide more options. So you can be in a sort of Catch 22 at times trying to decide which one or going for broke on all.
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  8. Posts : 353
    Windows 10 Professional
    Thread Starter
       #18

    I know Windows 10 sticks some goofy "special" partitions out there. But, the disk I installed, and the Windows 10 system I put on it originally had NO, I repeat NO, "special" partitions. Don't know why, don't really care. It worked for 7 months perfectly, 'til I retired it and gave it to my wife. And yes, I know how disk management works, and there were absolutely no "special" partitions in there either. The only thing in there, on the SSD, as the O/S partition and a 20GB unpartitioned chunk for over provisioning.

    Moot at this point since I blew the whole thing away the other day and just installed Windows 10 Home on a disk for the system. And this time there the customary couple additional partitions. Just for giggles, I'd be curious to know what would happen if you went into Partition Manager and got rid of those partitions...

    Anyhow, problem solved, not well, quickly or neatly, as I would have hoped, but solved.
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  9. Posts : 3,367
    W10 Pro x64/W7 Ultimate x64 dual boot main - W11 Triple Boot Pending
       #19

    One way I avoid any extra partitions even the small System Reserved that was introduced years back with Vista is to use the other OS's drve tools at times at least for physical installs while the Windows install will always suffice for VMs. I generally see the one single primary either for the OS install or for the main volume on a storage drive. One note on that is that a small 400mb of empty drive space reserved for conversion from MBR to GPT is needed at some point for any new drive(s) being added in.

    With the HP OEM primary having been a stubborn mule on the old 7 laptop I upgraded I ended up nuking the factory volumes off completely booting live from a Linux Mint Debian dvd to use GParted while live to nail the drive and then see a new primary for 10 as well as a second small backup partition created for someone who wouldn't ever need over 200gb anyways! Guess who has to set it up and run it when paying a visit no less?!

    You wouldn't have to worry about getting rid of any stubborn partitions for sure when booted live since there are no system or other processes running that are keeping the drive busy! Without any OS running the only possible concern would regard any encrypted volumes while NaDa for any regular volumes being removed with ease. Once you have a fresh primary created and can even see it formatted to NTFS while booted live you then allow the 10 installer to do the rest later when booting from the 10 media you have. One thing about imaging programs like Acronis for example is the secure erase option you can nuke any drive with except the one you are booted from into Windows while the recovery disk also has that option as well for live tools as well as recovery. You have some options available to see that tended to.
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