Maximum PC

I know there are a million software proggys out there that will help you to clone your hard drive. Every few years I build myself a new rig just so I have to best available system I can have. All of the media on my hard drives are building up.

I have 2 SATA II outlets available on my current system. Couldn't I just take a brand new hard drive, plug it into one of the SATA II outlets and just copy/paste or drag the files directly onto the new drive?? After formatting the new drive, of course???

I see all these cloning programs for sale and I think to myself how much easier it would be to do something like this. Has anyone out there successfully done something like this????

so you just want to use the new SATA drives for data? if it's just the media, sure, moving the data to the new drive works after plugging it in.

cloning sometimes does the whole drive, so if you want to use the new drive for a backup drive (as-is-state backup) then you would have to clone either the partition or drive to the new one.

i have 4 drives, one of them being for OS+ drivers only.

C: Operating system + drivers + some apps
D: Movies
E: Torrent Drive (any downloads go here, first)
F: Steam + Games, Install Programs, Saved Games

this way, i can just reinstall the OS, and not worry about data. the new OS detects each of the other drives later, and i am back in action.

Also - sometimes you get the free versions of the cloning software in certain drives, both HDD and Optical ones. for example, I use a free version of Acronis that i got with my SSD, and has helped me immensely.

Well you could, but how would you get it to boot?

Don't need it to boot, it would be a slave drive like my 3 other drives are currently.

Over a year ago I started using 60gig SSD drives as my C drive and placing nothing on them but OS and a few proggys. Any major problems and nothing serious would be lost......just a reformat.

My 3 other slave drives contain TB's of movies and TV shows all in HD. I wanna plug a new one in, copy the movies and tv shows my dad likes and give it to my dad as a slave drive for his pc.

So the difference when you clone a drive is bootability? If that is true that is no problem.

So if you're putting it in another position other then being the first disk, then why would you even worry about cloning?

Just wanna make sure what I plan to do will work.

It's so much easier to use cloning software. I purchased a SSD that came with a cloning kit with my current laptop. The cloning kit came with a HD case with a USB connector and Acronis True Image. I want my SSD as a boot drive and I moved the HD to my second bay. I recently bought a bigger SSD and cloned it stuck it in and it booted. There are 2 types of coping programs one will just copy files like Docs and spreadsheets. When using cloning software you boot into that software because you need to copy hidden files and files that are normally open when the OS is running.

Acronis is less then $50. I'm in IT and we use Symantec Ghost to make our images of our standard configuration.

One of the biggest differences between cloning software and backup software is cloning software run before the OS is loaded. The reason is there are files opened and can't be copied when the OS is running. Typically when you use cloning software you boot into that software and then set what you want to clone and the target.

Cloning software is great for creating system images that can be restored to restore to a default.

Backup software runs when the OS is up and can copy Docs and datafiles to different location.

My setup is similar to the other guys that has the 4 drives.

C Drive: 240 GB SSD basically for OS. I also have another 128 GB SSD that is will install Windows 8 on
E Drive: 750 GB HD where most of my app are installed. I also have some movies here because I dont take external drive when i travel.
G Drive - 2 TB External Esata drive music files and movies.

My system came with 1 750 GB HD as C drive. I purchased a 128 SSD and had to order a few cables so it was a little bit of time till I received the SSD drive. So there were a few apps installed when I cloned the drive. I recieved a SSD kit when i bought the SSD drive which included a Case with a USB connection and Acronis True Image cloning software.

A year later i saw a 240 gb SSD on sale so I purchased it. I placed the new drive in the case and connected it. I did learn that when I tried to clone the first drive the SSD USB case was attached to a USB 3 port and it didn't find the drive. But when I connectected it to the USB 2 port it worked. I put the Acronis cloning software in the drive and rebooted and Acronis came up running. It took about a hour and I removed the 128 GB SSD drive and added the 240 gb SSD drive and closed the case. I rebooted and windows came up and I checked my C drive I had around 100 GB free.

I suggest you to use Acronics tru Img software thats awesome and easy to use

Just right click and hold down the mouse button on the folders you want to copy over to the new drive, drag it to the new drive and release the mouse then left click on copy here....simple and it works just fine. No software no muss no fuss it just works.

Nasty