Cloning Original Drive

[Bánh mì]

Has anyone successfully cloned their original HDD to a Segate Momentus XT?
I have a dual boot Vista/W764 with recovery partition and would like to clone it to a larger Seagate HDD (hybrid SSD/HDD). Thanks in advance!

[Paul Pavlik]

I periodically Clone my original drive to a backup drive.

You must remove the Original Drive from the Thinkpad and mount it in the external Drive Enclosure. Install the Drive that you are Cloning TO inside the Thinkpad.

Then, using the Cloning Software, clone FROM the External Drive TO the Internal Drive.

[Bánh mì]

Thanks Paul for the quick response. How about moving the old drive to the additional drive bay (instead of an external enclosure as I would have to buy one). Also, using your method are you able to clone the recovery partition? I want a mirror duplicate and have heard anecdotally about some people not being able to clone the recover partition.

[GACrabill]

Has anyone successfully cloned their original HDD to a Segate Momentus XT?

I haven't cloned to a Seagate XT, but the best cloning product that I have used is Aomei Partition Assistant Home Edition. It is free and can be downloaded from :
http://download.cnet.com/Aomei-Partitio ... 18871.html

It correctly aligns the partitions when using the "copy" function. I have had no problems cloning Thinkpads to an SSD using the "inside-to-outside" method (I haven't used the "outside-to-inside" method for a couple of years). I have also "copied" a three-partition Dell from HDD to SSD and the correct alignments were confirmed using the free "AS SSD" software.

[Bánh mì]

Thanks for your response. As clarification, where you able to clone the recovery partition and found it to be workable afterwards? For a variety or reasons I would like a mirror of everything and Im not good at fixing MBRs and attempting to "weave" in missing partitions. Basically a newbie at this.

[cadillacmike68]

I periodically Clone my original drive to a backup drive.

You must remove the Original Drive from the Thinkpad and mount it in the external Drive Enclosure. Install the Drive that you are Cloning TO inside the Thinkpad.

Then, using the Cloning Software, clone FROM the External Drive TO the Internal Drive.

No you don't. At least not with Acronis TI. You can place the new / target HDD in the UltraBay, run the clone program from within windows, and when it finishes turn off the system. Acronis will even turn off the system for you when it is complete. Remove the new HDD BEFORE turning the system back on. Then you can put the clone in the new computer or swap the drives.

Or you can put the new / target in the Thinkpad's primary bay, and put the target in the UltraBay, but that is merely a waste of time IM(not so)HO.

If you REALLY want to waste time & money, go ahead and buy a USB enclosure and put your original HDD there. But be sre not to let windows boot with your original HDD in a USB, because, well let's say you won't like the resultant change to your original HDD's MBR.

Most (if not all) complaints about failed clones are the result of the machine booting or re-booting windows with the new or old HDD in a USB, or rebooting the machine afterwards with both HDDs still in drive bays. Only ONE will get selected as the boot drive by windows and the others will get their MBRs re-written.

It's not even "safer" to place your original HDD in a USB to execute a clone procedure. If somehow manage to flub up the boot from the clone CD, and get windows even starting to boot - well, there goes your original HDD's boot ability. Fixable, yes, if you have the right knowledge and equipment. Just don't do it.

I've cloned Hitachis Seagates & WDCs to each other & every which way in between using a variety of T30 and T61s. For T22s with w98, I have an older Partition Magic program that works great, but that's hard to find. I've probably cloned more drives that any 10 posters here combined.

[Bánh mì]

OK, thanks.

So does anyone know if the Lenovo recovery partition can be cloned successfully? And which software will do it with high rate of success. That's the only thing holding me up.

[cadillacmike68]

I cloned it on my wife's T61 several times, but i haven't tried to use it. with several good HDD clones, i don't really need it, but I'm not deleting it.

Acronis True image 2011 or 2012. It isn't free, but it's flexible and works very well. You can also make a bootable CD, which is VERY handy if you have the advanced dock with its Ultrabay. With that, you boot the Acronis bootable CD that it can make for you from the dock), while you have your original HDD in its original (primary) bay, and the new / target HDD in a tray in the Thinkpad's Ultrabay. It boots quicker and actually runs faster than if you start Acronis TI from withing windows.

[miro_gt]

@cadillacmike68

I dont know how you clone drives, but I've never had any problem cloning into HDD being into USB enclousure with Acronis or AOMEI Partition Assistant. On top of that, there's no difference if windows boots afterwards with the USB enclousure still connected or not, all it does is it changes the drive letter if still connected, because obviously you can't have two drives named as C: connected to the same system. MBRs dont get rewritten just like that - you make it sound that it wont boot anymore with the new cloned drive, and that's not true, I've done it before. Both my T61 laptops got their images from a clean install onto HDD that I made recently, one is just using different drivers for the video and some others for FP and BT. Even the wireless driver came with a package that supported both the 5300 and 4965 wifi cards.

the only problem that the OP may face is that the hidden recovery partition will most likely not clone as hidden/system partition but just like regular partition, so if the user wants to keep it hidden/system then this will have to be done manually. But IMO the hidden partition is such a waste of space that I remove it every time I see one. Cloning the main partition onto additional drive is the way to go.

I got rid of Acronis as it wont align partitions onto SSDs, and on top of that my version (2011) didn't want to clone from SSD to HDD but will do fine the other way (from HDD to SSD, but not aligned). I'm using AOMAI with great success, and would highly recommend it.

[cadillacmike68]

I suggest you read this (and the other pages) before stating that you can boot a computer with an additional drive in other than the boot indicated spot and expect that drive to boot the computer later after it's been moved.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.shtml

Further, you can't change the additional drive to C because that's already in use, and you can't boot it because it's media indicator byte is not set as a bootable drive, so you're SOL without proper knowledge.

I think you are confused, but good luck.

SSD alignment to me is not an issue, and if you are short short of space that you can't leave a 5 or 6 GB partition alone on a 750 or 1000 GB drive, then you have disk space usage issues you need to manage on your own.

[Bánh mì]

I've already decided I will move the old drive to the Ultrabay and place the new drive where it will reside after the clone. No sense in experimenting as the physical task of moving it has to be done anyway.

The $1M question is which software can clone the recovery partition? BTW I wont use Aomei. Any thoughts on Seagate's DiscWizard?

[cadillacmike68]

I've already decided I will move the old drive to the Ultrabay and place the new drive where it will reside after the clone. No sense in experimenting as the physical task of moving it has to be done anyway.

The $1M question is which software can clone the recovery partition? BTW I wont use Aomei. Any thoughts on Seagate's DiscWizard?

Acronis TI 2011 or 2012 will clone both partitions for you. If you are cloning to a same size drive, leave the new partitions as proportional. If you are going to a bigger drive, then use the manual sizing method and make the new drive's recovery partition to be the same size (myabe a few MB bigger depending on the drive's geometry) by adjusting the sliders. If you are cloning to a smaller drive, it will make size the recovery partition for you, but the old drive's main partition cannot have more used space than the new drive would have as available.

You will have to boot the Thinkpad from the ultrabay, so be sure to make the ultrabay HDD a bootable option in BIOS, and then you should be ok. That is unless you have a dock and a bootable Acronis CD which you would place in the dock and boot from there.

Be Sure to remove the old HDD from the computer before turning the system back on. You can't have two bootable HDDs in the computer both with winblows, when it boots. If you do, Windows will "fix" the MBR on whichever drive it chooses NOT to boot from. I kid you not on this.

[Brad]

I've already decided I will move the old drive to the Ultrabay and place the new drive where it will reside after the clone. No sense in experimenting as the physical task of moving it has to be done anyway.

The $1M question is which software can clone the recovery partition? BTW I wont use Aomei. Any thoughts on Seagate's DiscWizard?

My $1M answer from my experience with Acronis is that after cloning the recovery partition works on the cloned drive.

The Seagate program is a Seagate branded Acronis TI that needs to find a Seagate drive in the system in order to work.

Brad

[Bánh mì]

Forget Acronis or any derivative like DiscWizard. What a total disaster on the install and many attempts to remove a bad install. Its crapware. I'm going to use R&R to do my cloning despite it probably taking longer. Acronis has tons of complaints on removal of its software which is next to impossible.

[gazeddy]

i use macrium reflect on a different pc. both hdds in desktop pc only 3 hdds in pc old, new and the pcs boot drive took about 2 hours and copied all partitions and left me with two workable hdds for my t61

[Bánh mì]

I tried R&R. After 24 hours for the backup and another 3 to transfer to the new HDD, the end result was it does not move other than the OS partition in which the backup was created. Used version 4.5. For a dual boot this was a disaster as it would not copy my legacy Vista partition. Ended up just putting back the old drive as my patience has run out for the time being especially with R&R. I've got WD's version of Acronis on my system and removal corrupted everything. Even with the so called Acronis removal tool suggested by WD I had to install an old image. The only thing that actually seems to work in MSFT software. More reliable than all the other junk.

Can anyone suggest a good non OS cloning tool that will clone all partitions? I no longer care about the Lenovo service partition. Don't suggest BartPE. I know it will work for single partitions. Even if it does for multiple partitions, it takes too long.

[GACrabill]

...Can anyone suggest a good non OS cloning tool that will clone all partitions?

I am not sure what you mean by "non OS".

I previously posted in this thread that I have used the free AOMEI Partition Assistant to "copy" all partitions (including the recovery partition) on an Acer (I mistakenly posted that it was a Dell). AOMEI allows partition size adjustment and has a box that needs "checked" so that partition alignment is done. The "drive copy" process and options are set-up under Windows, but the actual copying takes place during a re-boot (so that no updates are done to the drive during the copy). I have had the process fail immediately at the start of the copy operation claiming that "something has changed" ... sometimes two or three times in a row ... but it then boots into Windows, I setup the options again, "apply" the "drive copy" operation, and the re-boot and attempt to copy tries again. After 0-3 immediate failures, it has correctly copied and aligned all partitions on hard drives for me (including copies from HDD to SSD). I have not had a reason to "try" the recovery partition since I always use full image copies for backup purposes.

Now the bad news. AOMEI gave me unbootable clones over the weekend when trying to get a new Win7 install cloned from a spare drive to a new drive which had just arrived to replace a relative's failed HDD. The copy completed but the new drive would fail to boot. This was an "inside-to-outside" clone process. I then removed the bootable drive and connected both it and the new drive to my laptop with USB adapter cables and again tried AOMEI (this drive copy occurs under Windows since he can easily lock the attached drives). This again resulted in a cloned drive which would not boot.

The good news (for me) was that I had seen the GAOTD (giveawayoftheday.com) of 01/10 and had downloaded and installed the free (for that day only) Paragon Drive Copy 12 Compact product. I have had good luck in the past using Paragon's Migrate-OS-to-SSD product. That function is included in DCC12 as well as a drive copy function ... and both functions correctly align the partitions during the copy (confirmed using the "AS SSD" product). I again used USB adapter cables to both drives and used my laptop's installed version of Paragon's DCC12. The new drive booted perfectly after the copy process.

Two other items of interest :
- The Paragon Migrate-OS-to-SSD function really does a complete drive copy with partition alignment of all partitions (seems to do the same thing as "drive copy" does). But, the AOMEI Migrate-OS-to-SSD function only copies the operating system partition and not the additional 100MB Win7 partition which makes that AOMEI function pretty worthless.
- AOMEI easily allows manual re-sizing of the partitions on the new (bigger?) drive but Paragon's DCC12 options only allow "as-is" and "proportional" resizing (though it did leave the Win7 100MB partition sized at 100MB when I chose "proportional").

The normal advantage of the AOMEI product is that it is always free and can therefore be installed on the PC that you are currently working on. The advantage of the Paragon product is that it works when AOMEI doesn't. The disadvantage of the Paragon product is that it is normally free only once or twice per year.

If I were you, I would try the free AOMEI product.
If that doesn't work, buy the Paragon Drive Copy 12 Compact product ($30?).

Good luck.

[Oglon3r]

Im surprised nobody mentioned Clonezilla....
It is as easy as it can get and clones hdd to ssd or hdd to hdd without an issue....
I had Windows 8, Windows 7 & hackintosh running on hdd just moved to ssd all partitions ran without an issue.

[cadillacmike68]

It is quite evident that some people are not paying attention.

To answer the Original post, Yes I cloned to a Seagate momentus model ST9160411AS using Acronis TI 11 - the RETAIL version with a T61.

This was the setup:
T61 with full advanced dock
Original Hitachi 100GB in Original drive bay I never moved this HDD.
New Seagate 160GB in Ultrabay
Acronis bootable CD in the Dock's ultrabay. I made the bootable CD some time ago, it is a feature in Acronis TI, easy as pie.
I cloned the entire disk including the factory restore partition.
When it finished i had Acronis turn the system off, it can do that and I Recommend it.
Then I removed the new HDD from the ultrabay and put it in my wife's widescreen T61 and it booted right up.
I cloned her HDD 3 more times, and all of them boot in different T61s. Same config.

This is my preferred method, especially if the new drive is intended for use in a different computer. That way I do not have to move the original HDD around.

Notes:
You CANNOT leave any more than ONE bootable HDD in the system when you restart it, or else windoze will "fix" the others. read my earlier references about this.

The bootable Acronis CD is actually a linux boot. so it IS a non-OS ad referenced.

Clonezilla should work just as well, but you need to be able to make the bootable CD. And Clonezilla cannot run from within windows like Acronis can.

Running Acronis TI from within windows eliminated the need for a 3rd spindle, but it is more of a pain, because it has to reboot 1 or 2 times. But it still works just fine. It does the real work during a reboot before win gets a chance to start. I clone from within windows when i don't have a dock with me.

You can put the original boot HDD in an enclosure, but if you have a dock, why bother, it's slower and the enclosure costs$ which I'd rather spend elsewhere. Besides, if you accidentally leave the original HDD attached when you reboot, well, read the first sentence under notes: above.

I haven't tried to uninstall it, but I can get anything off my system if i want to.

The disk branded versions of Acronis may not have all the features wanted, may not have the ability to make and use a bootable CD, and may only work if the TARGET HDD is that brand - although it might not matter as long as one of the HDDs is the proper brand. It probably runs a check at program start and it if finds a suitable brand HDD it starts.

If you can't figure out how to use clonezilla, I recommend purchasing the retail Acronis TI 11 or 12.

Acronis also has a Disk Director product, which is handy for re-sizng partitions once you get something working. It's very similar to the old Partition Magic. It's too bad symantec killed that nice product off.

I haven't studied the Paragon product, but will look at it because I eventually plan to migrate to w7 on an SSD boot drive and put a 750 or 1000GB in ad the D drive.

[GACrabill]

There are numerous old and newer cloning products.
A lot of them do not align the partitions as required for Windows 7 or for SSDs.

Have the Clonezilla and Acronis TI users verified that the output of their cloning operation was indeed aligned ?

The use of "AS SSD" is quick and easy and tells you if your alignment is "OK", or "BAD".