Thinkpads Forum

What is the current recommendation as to how best to clone the HDD in my w510, running win7pro, such that the result will be an interchangeable, bootable HDD? What combination of hardware and software will do the job most reliably? Whatever software is used, I do not want to have to register it on the net. I don't mind registering via phone. I just don't want to connect this laptop to the net...at all.

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

My procedure for cloning drives on a Thinkpad is as follows:

- main drive in the laptop's HD bay, as usual (see note below *)
- clone drive mounted in an Ultrabay hard drive adapter; not connected via a USB enclosure, in other words
- for me, Ghost 2003 (DOS) is what I'm familiar with and has done the job for years; Windows 7 is a little bit harder as I have to "fix" the non-booting clone drive since Ghost does not know about W7's partitioning structure

For your situation, I'd try Clonezilla instead of Ghost. It's freely available with no registration required as far as I know. Other people around here swear by Acronis True Image. You can download a two week free trial but I don't know if there's any operational restrictions on its usage during that time.

* Some people say that the CLONE drive should go into the laptop's HD bay and that the ORIGINAL drive should be put into the Ultrabay or connected via a USB HD enclosure. All I know is that I've done it both ways, however 95% of the time it's as outlined above since in most cases I want to copy an existing installation in a running system. Rather than move the original drive twice, once to the Ultrbay and then back into the HD bay, I take the lazy approach and leave it where it is. I swap out the optical drive in the Ultrabay with the HD adapter and start the cloning operation.

One word of warning: Do NOT boot the system with BOTH the original drive and cloned drive installed. In some cases it can royally screw up the drives. Make sure that the program you are using does not automatically re-boot the system after the clone is complete. Shutting down is okay as long as you remember to remove at least one of the drives before turning the system back on.

I always use Clonezilla, but I take the detour of making an image file. So I basically boot from an USB stick or CD with Clonezilla, create the image file from the original hard drive while it's in the HDD bay, save the image file on an external USB drive, swap the new drive into the HDD bay and put the image file back. By doing this, I also have the image file saved and I can use that if I want to revert the machine to that state in the future. The newer Windows versions have built in tools for making images, but I have never tried that. I have done tons of Clonezilla imaging and it has never failed once, so I stay with what I know works. The only issue I have ever run into is that it refused to work with a HDD where the recovery partition was intact.

Thanks a lot for the detailed response. I'll have to look up some of the terminology to understand it.
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I've cloned a few drives with Ghost, years ago...but have heard the boot sector of the win7 w510 can gum up the works..so I haven't tried it. Basically, all I want to do is make sure I can be up and running the next day if I have a HDD crash...and all w/o reinstalling all my software. That would take WEEKS...assuming I could find all my serial numbers..and assuming the various companies wouldn't think I was trying to pirate their software.

At this writing, I don't even know what an ultra bay is. I'll look it up..no need to respond to that. I don't even know what the spring loaded door is next to the SD ram slot.
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DLDavis wrote:What is the current recommendation as to how best to clone the HDD in my w510, running win7pro, such that the result will be an interchangeable, bootable HDD? What combination of hardware and software will do the job most reliably? Whatever software is used, I do not want to have to register it on the net. I don't mind registering via phone. I just don't want to connect this laptop to the net...at all.

Adding a quick note anyway: If the goal is to be able to recreate your HDD in case of a crash, making an image file is the solution. In that case you don't have to worry about the Ultrabay, since you won't need it. The new HDD can be installed directly in the HDD bay, and you reapply the image you made weeks, months or even years ago from the old HDD. Probably good to not let an image file be years old, so making one every year or after a major software install etc. could be recommended.

Btw, to save you some time, this is a pretty good step by step tutorial for creating an image file from your present HDD: http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-con ... disk_image

For restoring it onto the new HDD, follow this procedure: http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-con ... disk_image

Note that the new drive must be equally sized or bigger than the old one.

Good luck!

there are many different third party software that allow users to clone hard disk. as for me, i have tried this free disk cloning software. it works well and it is able to clone to a smaller one disk.
may be you can have a try.
hope can give you some help

Admin edit: Removed link and deactivated this account as it's from a registered spammer.

Clonezilla can also theoretically do that if you move into the advanced option, and use option -icds. http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/d ... -param.php I would however suspect this requires you to shrink the partition(s) beforehand so the total amount of used disk space on the old drive is less than the size of the new drive, and leave surplus space at the end unallocated. I don't know, though, I have never had the need to do this, so I have never actually tried it.

Thanks. I'll check out the links. I've read posts in the past that say Thinkpads have some glitch that stops cloned discs from booting. Will the procedure you outline control for that? Short of physically removing the hard drive that came with my w510, is there a way to test the cloned drive to see if it works like the original?

Norway Pad wrote:Adding a quick note anyway: If the goal is to be able to recreate your HDD in case of a crash, making an image file is the solution. In that case you don't have to worry about the Ultrabay, since you won't need it. The new HDD can be installed directly in the HDD bay, and you reapply the image you made weeks, months or even years ago from the old HDD. Probably good to not let an image file be years old, so making one every year or after a major software install etc. could be recommended.

Btw, to save you some time, this is a pretty good step by step tutorial for creating an image file from your present HDD: http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-con ... disk_image

For restoring it onto the new HDD, follow this procedure: http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-con ... disk_image

Note that the new drive must be equally sized or bigger than the old one.

Good luck!

DLDavis wrote:Thanks. I'll check out the links. I've read posts in the past that say Thinkpads have some glitch that stops cloned discs from booting. Will the procedure you outline control for that? Short of physically removing the hard drive that came with my w510, is there a way to test the cloned drive to see if it works like the original?

I have never had any issues, and I have cloned many Thinkpad drives over the years. I know I ran into problems with creating an image from a drive with a recovery partition, but there has never been any issues with booting. The best check is to simply see if it boots after the image is applied to it, as it will be in your HDD bay at that point anyway. I have though heard stories about drives refusing to boot because they were just connected over USB and not installed in the HDD bay when the image was applied.

Hi,

I've upgraded recently HDD to Samsung 850 Pro SSD and had real problems trying to copy Windows 7 partition to SSD.
What helped me to find out why copy process failed - booting "Parted Magic" distribution from USB flash drive and checking SMART status of my old Seagate Momentus 500 GB hard drive. There were errors there, so partition copy could not succeed. I had to make a file level copy of system partition (~4 hours for 150 Gb data) and then adjust drive letter for SSD back to C. Got one extra hour when working on batteries. It took 3 days to finally move to SSD.

I apologize in being late to the cloning party but I have to offer this.
Apricorn EZgig USB software/adapter has worked flawlessly for me cloning
drives before W10 installs (just in case?!) Also for cloning old HDD to SSD drives.
Lately cloning x61t and W510 laptops. Windows 10 works perfectly too.
It is a 4 click operation and it couldn't be simpler or faster, roughly 45 min. for a
60gb. clone to a SSD. In over 20 sessions in 2 yrs., not one bad copy.

I don't think there's a better product out there.