SERIOUSLY NEED HELP: How to replace Windows 10 PC internal old HDD with new HDD?

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

Hey guys,

I really hope I'm asking this in the right forum because I'm DESPERATE for help!

My situation:
My current internal HDD in my Windows 10 Pro PC is dying and I need to replace it with a new internal HDD.

What's the best way to transfer all of my files and settings from the old internal HDD to the new internal HDD?

This old HDD has been in use since 2012 and I know all HDD's eventually fail so I want to replace this as soon as I can.

Thank you so much!

 

[Gutwrench]

Came in to confirm. Left disappointed. 😞

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

I'm not sure what you mean?

What software do people recommend I use?

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

CloneZilla

 

[Silencio]

Clonezilla is the easiest, no fuss method. You can make your own USB boot drive to run it, or purchase a pre-rolled solution like Parted Magic.

I used to use Acronis True Image, but it's total overkill for simple disk clone tasks.

While you're in your PC, consider replacing the hard drive with an SSD. That should give it a nice speed boost.

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

Thank you for your replies Mr_Brightside and Silencio!

Other than buying a new internal HDD to replace the current internal HDD: Is there any other hardware I need to buy?

 

[Silencio]

Thank you for your replies Mr_Brightside and Silencio!

Other than buying a new internal HDD to replace the current internal HDD: Is there any other hardware I need to buy?

Depends on the PC. I think most recent Windows desktops can accommodate either a 3.5" or 2.5" drive pretty interchangeably.

What is the capacity of your current hard drive, and how much space are you using on it?

 

[velocityg4]

Clonezilla is a bit daunting for the uninitiated. Macrium Reflect is much easier and may be run within Windows. I recommend replacing the Hard Drive with an SSD. They're cheap enough now and you may as well get the performance boost. Many SSD also include their own cloning utilities. But I prefer to run Macrium anyways.

Just be sure to clone all partitions. Those ones you may have never seen before are used for booting.

 

[weeesss]

I agree replacing it with an SSD.

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

Depends on the PC. I think most recent Windows desktops can accommodate either a 3.5" or 2.5" drive pretty interchangeably.

What is the capacity of your current hard drive, and how much space are you using on it?

Thank you for your reply Silencio! I'm still trying to decide what capacity HDD to buy but it'll definitely be a 3.5" HDD.

Clonezilla is a bit daunting for the uninitiated. Macrium Reflect is much easier and may be run within Windows. I recommend replacing the Hard Drive with an SSD. They're cheap enough now and you may as well get the performance boost. Many SSD also include their own cloning utilities. But I prefer to run Macrium anyways.

Just be sure to clone all partitions. Those ones you may have never seen before are used for booting.

Thank you for your reply Velocity.

I've never used either Clonezilla or Macrium before.

The only backup App I've used is Apple's Time Machine and that worked perfectly.

How do Clonezilla and Macrium compared to Time Machine?

 

[velocityg4]

Totally different purposes. Time Machine is for backups. It gets your files, apps and settings. Plus gives you a revision history

Cloning software gives an exact duplicate of the cloned partitions. Everything is copied including system files not necessary for a backup. The big advantage of a cloned drive is it is ready to be used. Which is useful for cloned boot drives. If the boot drives fails. You plug in the clone and keep going. Which is why it's popular when upgrading boot drives too.

 

[iAssimilated]

If you do decide to replace your hard drive with an SSD, then I would check out the Samsung Consumer SSDs since they come with a data migration tool that will clone your old drive onto your new SSD. I did this back in the day with a Windows 7 box and it worked flawlessly.

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

Totally different purposes. Time Machine is for backups. It gets your files, apps and settings. Plus gives you a revision history

Cloning software gives an exact duplicate of the cloned partitions. Everything is copied including system files not necessary for a backup. The big advantage of a cloned drive is it is ready to be used. Which is useful for cloned boot drives. If the boot drives fails. You plug in the clone and keep going. Which is why it's popular when upgrading boot drives too.

Thanks for your reply Velocity!

I'm still unsure on how Time Machine and Macrium are different?

I don't want to use an SSD as a regular HDD is fast enough for me.

 

[LeeW]

If you want the simplest solution, by a cheap cloning dock from Amazon, couple of clicks, wait a while and done.

 

[IowaLynn]

Never found anyone to find HDD adequate after using SSDs. Even when the SSD is using USB connection.

Multiple backups and methods - redundancy. Because things go wrong, power outage during a copy. Also, spinners - hdd - are not suitable for the Apple partition format. Unless that changed. TimeMachine didn't support it until now, you had to use HFS+.

 

[clueless88]

Is your hard drive failing? How did your diagnose this? Depending on what you have been doing with your PC you may have corrupted the OS. May be good to do a thorough scan for malware using 2 or 3 different software--here is an article from PC World that I ran across when my Windows 10 machine started acting strangely--it seemed to straighten things out malware removal

I would recommend that you re-evaluate things after cleaning the drive up with something like Crystal Disk to see if the drive is indeed in dire straits.

If you still want to migrate to a different hard drive, it is imperative that you remove malware before cloning. Or you can start from scratch and do a fresh installation of Windows 10 on your new drive. The prices of SSDs have fallen dramatically, a 500GB Samsung should be around $70. Amazing how an SSD will breathe new life into an old machine.

 

[nearfield]

I upgraded the SSD in my laptop not too long ago. I went the following route: Use the Control Panel (the old one, not the Settings app), and go to "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)", then "Create a System Image" and follow the instruction and write the disk image to an external drive. Create a bootable USB disk, see, e.g., https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10. Then swap out the drives and change the boot order in the BIOS, or disrupt the booting process to boot from USB. You can then restore the system image. These steps are described in more detail here (https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7) and here (https://www.howtogeek.com/239312/how-to-restore-system-image-backups-on-windows-7-8-and-10/). This will copy everything from your old drive to the new drive, but will create a Windows partition that is as big as your old drive on the new one, and put a small system partition behind it. This system partition prevents the Windows Disk Utility to extend the Windows partition to cover the whole drive. I extended the Windows partition using the free version of Partition Magic. It expands the Windows partition to the whole drive, puts the system partition somewhere it belongs (either in front or behind the Windows Partition) in about 5 seconds, and you are done. Even if you make a mistake in the process, which I did until I realized that I needed Partition Magic, you still have the system image on the external drive, and you can start over, if need..

 

[BeautifulWoman_1984]

Thank you for your replies!

Yes, my internal HDD is definitely dying as it continues to work slower and slower.

I also did a scan using the App "HD Tune" and it said there were errors on the HDD.

 

[mmomega]

Hey guys,

I really hope I'm asking this in the right forum because I'm DESPERATE for help!

My situation:
My current internal HDD in my Windows 10 Pro PC is dying and I need to replace it with a new internal HDD.

What's the best way to transfer all of my files and settings from the old internal HDD to the new internal HDD?

This old HDD has been in use since 2012 and I know all HDD's eventually fail so I want to replace this as soon as I can.

Thank you so much!

I have used various software solutions to do an exact clone of the drive over SATA if possible so it goes much quicker.
Then remove the old drive and boot up. I would reasonably say 9.5 out of 10 times it boots right up like nothing ever happened.

I've used EaseUS clone drive before. When it was a free demo and worked perfectly.
Then some updates continuously point you to paying for it, more of an annoyance. I ekpt an old version to use if I need it inside of Windows.
There is also Clonezilla I use, boot from a USB and it has it's own GUI.

I use Clonezilla the most, mainly because it does not require any operating system be installed and will full clone the drive pretty quickly.
I've just experience less issues using it as opposed to EaseUS clone, where since it is in Windows running, if Windows tries to make a change to a system file in the background, the application may error out and you not know it for 30 minutes to an hour.

 

[I7guy]

I used clonezilla. I created a bootable CD, although one can create a bootable USB. I actually have an external enclosure in my desktop case, so it was easy to clone the drive. After the clone, I took apart the case and unplugged the old drive and plugged in the new drive. I have old WD 1tb green drives that I replaced with WD 1tb black drives.

No issues whatever.