Hard Drive Image Ghosting
 

question to the computer gurus out there.

im thinking about buying a bigger SSD to replace my current one. my question is, will i be able to image ghost my current SSD to the larger SSD that i won't have to reinstall windows or other software to re-register the regedit info. im hoping after imaging i would just have to make my new SSD the primary HD to boot off and then format my old one. if it helps im running windows 7 64-bit.

Hey there Alby,


I am not sure the situation that you've mentioned is called ghosting.
If you google-up "cloning a hard drive" you may have better results.

My buddy was in the same boat a few months back, he played around with 3 softwares before deciding which one to use.

-Clonezilla
-Acronis
-Data Rescue 3

And if I remember correctly, it's a very lengthy process and he had to buy a eSATA cable for the job as well.

Search up the softwares I had mentioned, since they'll provide some solid instructions on what to do.

Yes. You can clone your ssd from the smaller one to the newer one. The imaging/cloning software will resize the partition to make use of the extra space on the new drive.

I use acronis but for a free app gparted is pretty good. Just make sure you're going from the smaller drive to the bigger drive. Otherwise you'll completely wipe the wrong drive. The only other thing you'll need is an extra sata cable as both drives will be connected and powered up at the same time.

YouTube should have some good tutorials.

I use Acronis, it is one of the industry standards and quite easy to use. Did the exact same procedure mentioned by !MiKrofT when I moved from my 120GB SSD to a 240GB SSD.

thanks all for the input.

which acronis versions do you guys use? i always have problems cloning ssds when using acronis.

Got 2012 from work. 2011 or newer should work fine.
Posted via RS Mobile

You can also use Windows backup function. You can create a system image using Windows. Turn off your computer, install your new hard drive, then boot using a windows disc. Windows disc has a recovery function that would be able to put that image onto your SSD.

You would need a secondary storage hard drive in your computer big enough to hold the system image though, as well as a windows installation disc.

I found this easier than other ways.

hrm never thought about that option too. thanks!

I'll throw another option out there.

There are some dual bay hard drive docks available now that support offline cloning.

This one is about $40:
Newegg.ca - SYBA CL-ENC50038 2.5" & 3.5" White USB 3.0 Dual Mode SATA III HDD Duplicator + Docking Station

I bought this awhile back, but haven't actually used it yet.

This is another one that's a bit more expensive at $65:
Newegg.ca - Cavalry "Retriever" Series EN-CAHDD2BU3C-ZB 2.5" & 3.5" Black Standalone SATA Hard Drive Duplicator + USB 3.0 Dual-Bay Dock

But I've used this one quite a few times, and it has worked beautifully.

Basically, you just put the old and the new drives into the designated slots, and push a button on the dock, and it'll make a perfect clone.

The size of the partition will be the same on the new, bigger drive, but with Windows 7, that's a snap to fix. Just need to go into Disk Manager and resize the partition to fill the whole disk.