I've come across this question many time on various forums and blogs, where user wants to replace there bad or failing hard drive with another brand new hard drive of larger sizes but unsure on how they can safely move or copy OS and all the program files without loosing data.
So, I've decided to write this to the point article and let user know the safest way of moving OS from bad hard drive to new one without loosing any program or important files.
Disk Cloning is much powerful way which safely makes the exact replica of your bad hard drive without giving any booting failure. Keep in mind that you can't simply copy all the OS files to new hard drive and suppose it to works perfectly, instead it might gives you a series of error message as well as prevent you to access your desktop.
Cloning will easily copy the entire hard drive content i.e., entire OS folder, hidden files, directory structure as well as the booting information (required to boot OS) and place it in the new hard drive without needing you to install a fresh copy of Windows on your new hard drive.
Thereafter, you can easily replace the old hard drive and start using the new hard drive for storing your valuable data and running your OS.
Download disk cloning software, your first step?
Once you realized that the drive goes bad and you've left no choices other than replacing it, purchase a new hard drive of equal or larger size as compare to old one and attach it to your computer as a secondary or slave drive. We'll use this drive to place the cloned copy of old drive and later than, make it as master or bootable drive.
You'll need an efficient drive cloning tool for successfully cloning the drive. Stellar Phoenix Partition Recovery is a complete DIY and packed with advanced features, which gives you a secure way to clone hard drive as well as an ability to recover partition as well as the containing data when anything goes wrong.
You can download this software from here and install it on your old hard drive. Once you install this software, start it from the desktop or programs menu.
Navigate to Advanced option screen of this software and click on an option entitled Drive Clone.
Select the source drive, which is your problem drive and destination disk would be your new externally attached storage device.
Once you’ve done with this can start cloning the drive. This may take some time depend on the size of the drive and number of available bad sectors and blocks which your hard drive has developed during the course of using it.
Once the cloning process completes, you can now easily replace the problem or bad drive with new drive and later, restore OS and all of your data from it.
So, I've decided to write this to the point article and let user know the safest way of moving OS from bad hard drive to new one without loosing any program or important files.
Disk Cloning is much powerful way which safely makes the exact replica of your bad hard drive without giving any booting failure. Keep in mind that you can't simply copy all the OS files to new hard drive and suppose it to works perfectly, instead it might gives you a series of error message as well as prevent you to access your desktop.
Cloning will easily copy the entire hard drive content i.e., entire OS folder, hidden files, directory structure as well as the booting information (required to boot OS) and place it in the new hard drive without needing you to install a fresh copy of Windows on your new hard drive.
Thereafter, you can easily replace the old hard drive and start using the new hard drive for storing your valuable data and running your OS.
Download disk cloning software, your first step?
Once you realized that the drive goes bad and you've left no choices other than replacing it, purchase a new hard drive of equal or larger size as compare to old one and attach it to your computer as a secondary or slave drive. We'll use this drive to place the cloned copy of old drive and later than, make it as master or bootable drive.
You'll need an efficient drive cloning tool for successfully cloning the drive. Stellar Phoenix Partition Recovery is a complete DIY and packed with advanced features, which gives you a secure way to clone hard drive as well as an ability to recover partition as well as the containing data when anything goes wrong.
You can download this software from here and install it on your old hard drive. Once you install this software, start it from the desktop or programs menu.
Navigate to Advanced option screen of this software and click on an option entitled Drive Clone.
Select the source drive, which is your problem drive and destination disk would be your new externally attached storage device.
Once you’ve done with this can start cloning the drive. This may take some time depend on the size of the drive and number of available bad sectors and blocks which your hard drive has developed during the course of using it.
Once the cloning process completes, you can now easily replace the problem or bad drive with new drive and later, restore OS and all of your data from it.