Hard drive copy???

LaRue Medlin · Nov 19, 2011

Just bought a 500 gb drive for my laptop (59$) and now need to clone my 160 to the 500 and install it. Anyone know if there is a good "free" disk-cloner or a retail program that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I have disk-image (retail) but it won't work on win 7. It will cost 45$ to take it to the local pc shop. Clone (image) it to a usb drive and then back to the new drive.

Richard L · Nov 19, 2011

LaRue,

Most disk makers will have a free utility that will copy your old harddrive to the new one. Go to the drive makers website and see what they have in their Support Downloads. Hopefully they will have a Window-7 version available for download.

...Rich

LaRue Medlin · Nov 20, 2011

:smack: Thanks Richard. I should have thought of that. So I went to WD and found this.. Acronis True Image WD Edition ... free and worked like a charm. I just had to go around my elbow to get to my thumb. Had to restore the laptop to factory, load software and the re-restore MY styuff from a usb drive... Good to go.... Hey, they will let me have the full 2012 version for 29$, might just have to do it...:driving::driving::driving:

Richard L · Nov 20, 2011

LaRue,

Great! I'm glad you found WD had one that worked for you and the price was right..:grin: I know that Seagate, Maxtor, and Toshiba drives have similar utilities, and some work better than the others. Some even include a CD with their utility programs along with the drive.

...Rich

Wes Davis · Nov 20, 2011

SeaGate software cloned my failing drive over to a new drive perfectly. It was truly plug and play. A real lifesaver. I thought for sure I would loose some program registries or something like that.

LaRue Medlin · Nov 20, 2011

cloning a desktop is easy, you can put both drives up together, My laptop I had to do a disk/partition backup to a usb drive and then swap hd's. Boot from a flashdrive set up from the backup software and then restore the disk. 3 hrs later, I'm writing this post on a new 500gb hd..... whoooohooooo :haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer::haveabeer: