Clone hard drive software recommendation

[stevesideas]

Has anyone used this kind of software before ? I need to clone one version of windows to 4 other machines as they are all exactly the same setup. Any recommendations on some reliable software would be appreciated. All drives are SSD if that makes a difference.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Acronis true Image.

[glorybound]

Clonezilla is good, too.

[kalamazandy]

Clonezilla for sure. It's pretty solid.

[MoonDoggie]

Acronis. A+.

[stevesideas]

Thanks guys...looks like I have a couple of choices.

[MoonDoggie]

http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

The deal after reading about this recently myself. There are lots of very good programs (some even free) that do exactly what disc cloning is (copying bits 100% from one drive to the other, which is a relatively straightforward task) you really are paying for some of the other goodies you get from one program to the other. Check out what each program can do and see if you need that feature. Then make your decision based on that.

Source: This month's issue of Maximum PC has a review of this exact question
http://shop.futureus.com/maximum-pc/...uary-2014.html

[stevesideas]

I'm going to try the top one on this page. It's free and does cloning which is all I need. Thanks for the advice.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...#reflectanchor

[stevesideas]

Just to add. I ended up using reflect and the whole process was very easy. I installed windows on one drive (a samsung SSD by the way..very fast!) and then installed 3dsmax, vray and various plugins. I then installed macrium reflect. Turned off the system...added another SSD and then selected that as the drive to clone to. The entire cloning process took about 5-10 mins per drive. So straight forward !

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Just to add. I ended up using reflect and the whole process was very easy. I installed windows on one drive (a samsung SSD by the way..very fast!) and then installed 3dsmax, vray and various plugins. I then installed macrium reflect. Turned off the system...added another SSD and then selected that as the drive to clone to. The entire cloning process took about 5-10 mins per drive. So straight forward !

Do you know maybe if u can not have to connect 2 hdds at the same time?

I'm about to clone 4 hdds and I can only connect 1. My idea was. Connect 1, install win/etc/ unplug. Connect to wrokstation/ create image/ unplug/ connect other hdds 1 by 1, install image. Is that doable using what you used?

[Preisler]

Dadal,

If you have a running windows on the disk (...and if I remember right?) you can replace the the disk with an image from a server or another workstation.

We use Macrium Reflect to take a snapshot/ back-up of the system - and it's way easier that You can do it on a running system and not have to boot up in linux or somthing else

Note: All the suggested applications above works great on diskcopy. In the old Dos days Ghost was my favorite choice
...and if you are a Mac user you must know Carbon Copy Cloner!!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

I give up and ended up installing all by hand... took me 2h but its running now. Just finishing out some parts.

Thanks, bye.xxx

[tricky]

Following on the back of this, some of our workstations have only 128GB SSD for the main drive. Do any of these software packages allow you to transfer the contents of the 128GB drive to , say, a 512GB SSD drive? Do all progs still work as normal, or does the Windows OS (7 in this case) 'know' something has changed and spaz out?

[Preisler]

Tricky,

If the Used disk space is less than the size of your target disk then no problem - It will rescale the partition so it fits the target disk or whatever size you set for the partition.

Macrium Reflect free version can do that.

[tricky]

Tricky,

If the Used disk space is less than the size of your target disk then no problem - It will rescale the partition so it fits the target disk or whatever size you set for the partition.

Macrium Reflect free version can do that.

So, as an example:

Current disk total size = 128GB
Current disk used size (inc swap disk etc) = 100GB
Current disk free = 28GB

Target disk total size = 512GB

Using Macrium Reflect (free) can simply clone the current disk onto the target disk and then I can chuck out the small disk and use the target disk instead without a problem?