best free cloning program for windows 7

I just tried Clonezilla and it's throwing a fit that I'm trying to clone a 1tb disk down onto a 128gb disk..
 
On a similar question:
I am upgrading a 320gb Scorpio Blue to a 320gb Scorpio Black (returning a $63 Blue to Amazon and got the $68 Black, $5 difference seemed worth it).
Would the free version of Acronis that Western Digital offers be a good tool to use to clone the Blue to the Black drive?
 
sprtnbsblplya said:
On a similar question:
I am upgrading a 320gb Scorpio Blue to a 320gb Scorpio Black (returning a $63 Blue to Amazon and got the $68 Black, $5 difference seemed worth it).
Would the free version of Acronis that Western Digital offers be a good tool to use to clone the Blue to the Black drive?
Click to expand...

I've used it several times with no problems. So long as the destination drive is a WD drive, you should be fine.
 
Downsize partition on original disk using disk management enough to fit on new disk, boot off an ubuntu live disk or something similar, and run on a terminal: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
 (where sda is origin and sdb is destination).
 
Hmm well since I can't the damn thing to clone anyway I might as well fresh install this. thanks for the info guys. Does AHCI allow for hot-swapping?
 
Snowknight26 said:
Just use the built-in backup utility.
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate please? More precisely how do I backup a 1TB drive to a 128gb drive? Also, can I enable TRIM when the SSD is in IDE compatibility mode?
 
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As long as you defrag the drive beforehand and there is no data in the on the partition past the 128GB mark (you can check by trying to shrink the volume), simply make a backup and restore to the new drive.
 
Ok thanks I'll try. I've only used about 64gb so in theory this should work.
 
Ok the backup utility finished ok. The ssd says 69gb used. However trying to boot from it gives a bootmgr is missing error. I tried repairing from a windows disk but it said the ssd's partition table is corrupt. Now what?
 
Windows Backup and restore isn't working. I'm getting an error that a valid drive can't be found even though it sees my SSD. This is beyond frustrating.
 
You need AHCI on to enable TRIM.

The reason the restore is failed is because you have a blank disk and are restoring data volumes to it. The disk was never set to contain a bootable volume so the disk is missing that data. If you go from one disk to another disk, if you don't do a straight clone, you have to have the partitions set up ahead of time so that it can be bootable from a data restore.

I think you're demonstrating for us exactly why you want to do a clean install when migrating, which is why I suggested it. It baffles me sometimes to wonder why having a fresh OS installation, with none of the junk you've accumulated over the years, is not worth it to some people, consider it only takes a few hours to get it all set back up. Windows 7 from a USB stick installing to an SSD only takes about 8 minutes. It will likely take more time trying to figure out a method that works to migrate, then fixing all the errors that come up along the way, than it would of taken doing it right from the begining.
 
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bigdogchris said:
You need AHCI on to enable TRIM.

The reason the restore is failed is because you have a blank disk and are restoring data volumes to it. The disk was never set to contain a bootable volume so the disk is missing that data. If you go from one disk to another disk, if you don't do a straight clone, you have to have the partitions set up ahead of time so that it can be bootable from a data restore.

I think you're demonstrating for us exactly why you want to do a clean install when migrating, which is why I suggested it. It baffles me sometimes to wonder why having a fresh OS installation, with none of the junk you've accumulated over the years, is not worth it to some people, consider it only takes a few hours to get it all set back up. Windows 7 from a USB stick installing to an SSD only takes about 8 minutes. It will likely take more time trying to figure out a method that works to migrate, then fixing all the errors that come up along the way, than it would of taken doing it right from the begining.
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Ok great post, thanks. There are a couple reasons why I wanted to avoid a clean install. One, this is a relatively fresh install so there is no junk on it. Two, I don't care about speed with this machine (but TRIM might be nice). And three, I wanted to avoid using my Product Key yet because I think the version I have only gets so many installs and this would the third time I've done it.

All that being said it might just be worth doing a clean install and be done with it. I kinda wanted to try to get better at disk management since, as you can see, I'm terrible at it and it frustrates me to not know how to do something. For the sake of argument how do i set the partition tables up correctly and make the ssd bootable?
 
bigdogchris said:
It baffles me sometimes to wonder why having a fresh OS installation, with none of the junk you've accumulated over the years, is not worth it to some people, consider it only takes a few hours to get it all set back up.
Click to expand...
It takes at least several days for me to get it to 100% prior state. The OS install itself, then all the drivers, then setting it all up and customizing (which I do alot of), then all the programs, then all of the settings for each of those programs, licenses, update settings, security rules...oh, and all the users and many times repeating the Windows and programs customizations for each of them... A few hours? Hardly.
 
Meeho said:
It takes at least several days for me to get it to 100% prior state. The OS install itself, then all the drivers, then setting it all up and customizing (which I do alot of), then all the programs, then all of the settings for each of those programs, licenses, update settings, security rules...oh, and all the users and many times repeating the Windows and programs customizations for each of them... A few hours? Hardly.
Click to expand...

I agree. I guess I too am one of those people who gets no joy from installing Windows. But I am one of those people who does not install garbage on my machine that I want cleaned off later - I use VMs for that.

For almost four years I ran the same OS installation off my Q9550 system and my OS drive went from Raid0 2x640GB WD to a single WD Velociraptor, back to the 2x640GB, back to the single Velociraptor, then to two striped Velociraptors, to a single Crucial 64GB C300 to a single Samsung 830 SSD. SIX changes in all and I spent LESS time getting than OS going than it took for me to open up the case and do the disk swapping.

If you have a sound backup system in place, moving the same OS installation to another drive is nothing. Use VMs to install your garbage, freeware, experimental browsing and installs and you won't feel the need to "clean house" with a fresh install.

A fresh install will not get you into AHCI mode automatically. You still have to go into the BIOS and change it. A fresh install does mean that if you are changing to AHCI you will not have to do the registry edit prior to the BIOS change, but that is it. I do not recommend attempting to change your IDE/AHCI/RAID mode on an existing Windows installation without doing a fresh backup and having a reliable backup-recovery solution in place.

On the more recent Intel chipsets, I recommend going to RAID mode vs. AHCI for a fresh install, even if you are not going to use RAID on your boot drive. RAID does everything AHCI does, plus will allow you to configure RAID arrays at a later date if the need arises.

Would the free version of Acronis that Western Digital offers be a good tool to use to clone the Blue to the Black drive?
Click to expand...
Yep. I've used that version as well as the paid version, but almost always use the backup-restore vs. the clone method, mostly because it gives me more control over partition sizes.
 
shoota said:
And three, I wanted to avoid using my Product Key yet because I think the version I have only gets so many installs and this would the third time I've done it.
Click to expand...

You can reinstall on the same system without problems, if it doesn't activate you just call MS with the number they provide and activate it over the phone.

However, if you are paranoid about it this allows you to backup your product key, it works great.
 
Was doing some SSD research about partition alignments (in part due to a discussion I'm having in another thread). If you are coming from a 512 byte hard drive (which you likely are) and are migrating to an SSD, the alignment on the SSD will not be correct unless you use a migrating tool which properly aligns the SSD. Of course the other option is to do a fresh install of 7, which will properly align the partitions for you if you allow the setup utility to create all partitions.

Here is a link to a nice article which talks about the downside of migrating from an older partitioned hard drive to an SSD without proper alignment.

http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-...ned-for-optimal-solid-state-drive-performance
 
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Well I'm going to do the fresh install but now I have a new problem. After the Windows dvd loads and I choose Custom Install it doesn't see my ssd. I have it ntfs formatted and set to ahci in bios. What's going on here?
 
bigdogchris said:
Since you want AHCI mode on for an SSD, a fresh install.

:D
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You don't need to do a fresh install of Windows to turn on AHCI mode... just enable the AHCI driver in Windows, boot into the BIOS, and then enable AHCI mode on your SATA controller. Windows will boot normally.

And be careful what version of Acronis you use to image from a hard disk to an SSD. New versions will preserve partition alignment, old versions will not. If you find your partition isn't aligned after imaging... it's not too difficult to fix, but it's annoying.
 
I have an evga z68 FTW motherboard but I don't know which controller that is. When I turned AHCI on I would bsod.
 
shoota said:
I have an evga z68 FTW motherboard but I don't know which controller that is. When I turned AHCI on I would bsod.
Click to expand...

You need to enable the AHCI driver in Windows before you enable AHCI mode in the BIOS, otherwise you'll get a BSoD when you attempt to boot in AHCI mode.
 
How do I enable the driver in Windows? And how do I install Windows to the ssd if there is no Windows in which to enable a driver?
 
shoota said:
How do I enable the driver in Windows?
Click to expand...
A quick Google search would have told you how to enable the AHCI driver post-install in Windows 7, but here's the information anyway...

1. Navigate to the following registry key: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci"

2. Right click the value named "Start" and click "Modify" from the context menu

3. Change the value data to "0"

4. Reboot for the changes to take effect, Windows 7 will load the AHCI driver next time you start the system, allowing it to boot from drive controllers in AHCI-mode.

shoota said:
And how do I install Windows to the ssd if there is no Windows in which to enable a driver?
Click to expand...
Slow down cowboy, you're making assumptions. Just because Windows 7 didn't enable AHCI mode on your system doesn't mean it can't automatically enable AHCI mode during installation...

The Windows 7 installer automatically detects if you're using IDE hard disks (or IDE Emulation Mode on SATA hard disks), and disables the AHCI driver from loading if an AHCI-compatable controller isn't found in your computer. There's no need to load the driver if there's no hardware that will use it, after all.

Now, on the other hand, if it does detect an AHCI-compliant disk controller in your computer, it will keep the AHCI driver enabled and Windows 7 will boot normally.
 
Thanks for the info UO. The problem is that the windows install doesn't see my ssd when I have AHCI turned on in bios. So should I put it to ide mode, install windows, then enable ahci using the method you posted?
 
strange.
You shouldn't need to do this but you can try downloading one of the two F6 drivers here:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...duct=Intel®+Rapid+Storage+Technology&lang=eng
the x86 one is 32bit, the x64 one is 64 bit.



1) unzip and copy the files to a flash or external drive,
2) select AHCI in your bios again and boot to the windows 7 install disc.
3) when windows install comes up asking for you to choose a drive to install to, choose the advanced options and select "load driver". Select the appropriate file (.inf i think) from your flash and see if that helps.
 
Update: I spent some time googling why the windows disk couldn't see my ssd even though i formatted it in windows 7. I came across a thread where a few people had the same issue and used gparted to format the ssd. I tried that and it also worked for me. Typing from my fresh install right now. Thanks for all the help and info guys.
 
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