Windows Vista clone hard drive with windows vista

Hi You might want to consider this also! This is not hard, but if it's all new to you, it can seem a little over whelming.
My advise is to create a image first so you have away to recover a mess up.
Maybe other members will have more or better suggestions.
Good luck!

Backing up your entire drive: Cloning vs. imaging

First of all, you should understand that a CD and an external hard drive are much different. If you clone your old drive to a CD, you should make it by create a bootable disc. Here, since you use an USB external hard drive, things will be easier and clone\install job is enough. For both, you can try AOMEI Backupper, a powerful software and free one.

jacksonX said:

First of all, you should understand that a CD and an external hard drive are much different. If you clone your old drive to a CD, you should make it by create a bootable disc. Here, since you use an USB external hard drive, things will be easier and clone\install job is enough. For both, you can try AOMEI Backupper, a powerful software and free one.

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Hey jackson! Welcome to the forum! Yes a CD and a external drive are very different. You don't clone your old drive to a CD. You clone your old drive to another Hard drive. Then you put that Hard drive in a drawer and wait until you need it. I have heard that AOME is a very good program.
A back up image of your OS is the best friend you will ever have. If you're going to create a image on a regular basis, you need a external drive.
I keep mine on a seagate 1TB. As I have stated; I prefer a image to a clone, for the reasons in my links attached in my replies!

Clonezilla is another good option for disk cloning. It's also free. Clonezilla - About

or if you are really crazy, grab a live Linux distro
run dd if=/dev/zero of=/sometext.txt wait until it dies
then create an image of your hard drive dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb/system.img
then gzip to compress out the zero data you wrote to it.

Hi musiclover2000,

I'd go with the MACRIUM REFLECT here as mentioned by holdum, I've tested all the major free and fee-based programs on the marker, and Macrium is by far the best. I've tested on a wide variety of PC desktops and laptops across major brands from WinXP all the way through Win10. Neemo's suggestion of Clonezilla isn't bad, but it's for tekkie experts, definitely an advanced program! Also, Clonezilla fails to work on Win10 environment reliably, however it does a fairly good job on older systems such as XP, Vista, Win7. No offense, Neemo!!

I've spent the last 2 years working on Image Cloning, and have selected to use the Macrium to protect all of my top Client's computers, both business and home and it hasn't let me down yet. I keep Macrium images for about 3 dozen of my Client's computers, and especially when I build them a new computer or laptop from scratch. Also, I beta-tested both Macrium and Acronis on Win10 as part of the Windows 10 Insider Testing community. Both of those products are superior IMO.

Best of luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

Thanks for the help I'll check out MACRIUM REFLECT

Here you go! You won't regret it!
Macrium Reflect Free
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For sure! Don't forget to get 1 or more usb external drives to store your Macrium backup images on. I recommend the WD usb drives, probably since I helped design there technology back in the 80s and 90s! (yes, I'm biased when it comes to hard drives!).

Best of luck,
<<<BBJ>>>

Let me see if I understand this completely. A clone is a complete replica of the old drive. An image is a back up of the entire drive just a file not a clone. To make a clone I would need a usb adapter to plug new drive into laptop to clone with macrium reflect. To use a image file and put that on a new drive or restore old drive I would need to put the image on a USB flash drive or DVD and be bootable to reinstall everything and macrium relect will do this is that correct?

If thats true I may just create an image for the laptop and just make a bootable usb flash drive or dvd's and install that on the new drive for the laptop and keep it around if it's ever needed to restore os again. I'll probably make some restore media for my desktop also.

Thank you

Hey music! Not sure you have it completely right. Like @BIGBEARJEDI replied. You put your Macrium Reflect images on a external USB drive.
I like to create a new image at least once a month. I keep 5 or 6 and delete the old images. I have a 1TB seagate that I use for my images. It will take you a little time to understand imaging , but it's the best tool you will ever have when a disaster comes a long. I'm sure BBJ will have a reply to this a little latter! I'm a little lazy and so I find a good link that I like to explain things for me.
Here's a very good link that explains the difference between a clone and a image. Yes you would need a docking device to clone a drive for a lap top. I have a docking cable for that. You only need a external USB drive to create images. If you need more help, someone here will have the answers!
Backing up your entire drive: Cloning vs. imaging

musiclover2000 said:

Let me see if I understand this completely. A clone is a complete replica of the old drive. An image is a back up of the entire drive just a file not a clone. To make a clone I would need a usb adapter to plug new drive into laptop to clone with macrium reflect. To use a image file and put that on a new drive or restore old drive I would need to put the image on a USB flash drive or DVD and be bootable to reinstall everything and macrium relect will do this is that correct?
>>>Almost, the way the software works in regards to using the Image file to restore a hard drive is that the program must create a bootable DVD disc or USB stick configured to that specific computer's hardware and Windows version being used. It also must be tested prior to the Restore being attempted, as often if it's done with an incorrect WinPE version, the disk or stick may not boot you into the programs stand-alone (non-Windows standard mode) that's needed to run the Restore Image back onto your hard drive. This can be confusing. Macrium calls this disc the *RESCUE MEDIA*, and Acronis calls it the *RESTORE DISC* or something. The 3 programs we use most here all pretty much help you to make that bootable disc for WinPE; as long as you do that and don't click "Cancel" on the popup windows, you'll be fine.
Actually, "clone" and "image" are somewhat interchangeable, as they both really do the same thing; they are not different. In fact, most of us Techs often refer to a "backup Clone Image", which is somewhat redundant so we'll say something like "...make a Backup image" or "...make a Clone image". They are bit-wise copy programs and they are functionally identical. Just like people think that a laptop hard drive uses different technology than a desktop PC hard drive. That's not true. They both use identical technology to perform their function, they just have different form-factors (size); laptop drives are 3.5" and desktop PC drives are 5.25". Hope that clears things up a bit.<<<

If thats true I may just create an image for the laptop and just make a bootable usb flash drive or dvd's and install that on the new drive for the laptop and keep it around if it's ever needed to restore os again. I'll probably make some restore media for my desktop also.

Thank you

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Hi Brad,
You've got the general idea here, just one correction, in RED, above for you.

<<<BBJ>>>

Hi BBJ ! Are you aware that the latest version Macrium Reflect does not need a rescue disc You can boot right into Macrium.It's a good idea to make the rescue disc however. When I boot up, I'm given the option to hoot into W10 or Macrium. I don't need the rescue disc any more YEA!
Have a look here my friend. I have the free version and it works like a charm. You use to have the paid version. Any way, I don't have to look for the disc any more!
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Ran into a problem tonight. The cd rom hasn't worked for a long time so a got a usb external dvd burner. I burned a acer recovery disk image tonight before performing this in case something happened like this. The reason for the clean install I got to thinking the drive may have viruses or something like that on it since at times it ran like a turtle and the resource monitor said the memory consumption was only a little over 1Gb and cpu was running at 100%.

It won't restore it attempts to but I get the error restore failed reason 0xd000000d

Im guessing the hard drive had problems because awhile ago I performed a disk check and it had a bad sector on it and took awhile to load after the check. I'm lucky should have made those recovery disk a lot sooner. If it had bad sectors I'll bet the clone probably would have failed anyway.

My plan now is to purchase a new hard drive and use the acer recovery disk I burned tonight, and I did back up all the files on a external drive if your wondering. Best buy has a compatible WD hard drive for about 50 bucks. The original drive was 160Gb the new drive will be 500Gb hopfully the laptop recognizes all that extra space in a older machine but if doesn't as long as it works thats all i care about.

I'll probably still use macrium reflect for my desktop

Thanks for all the help

Finally got that laptop working somewhat. Here's what I did and the issue.

The new hard drive didn't fix the problem so I figured the recovery disc I burned didn't take. Very lucky I was able to find a recovery disc on ebay. I put the old drive back in and installed vista with all my drivers with the recovery disc from ebay. Its a complete clean install.

The problem is the cpu runs at 100% most of the time. I had the same problem before I reinstalled everything ,it does run much better then before. I installed windows vista home basic 64 bit and the processor is 64 bit compatiable I believe. It has 3 gb of ram installed. The old drive now is only like 60gb. With vista installed, firefox ,chrome installed roughly around 50gb left on hard drive. Except for the cpu usage it runs much better.

If I were to re purchase a new hard drive and try vista 32bit would that take care of the cpu usage or is the problem actually vista itself? I've heard vista is a like a ram or resource hog.

Thank you for your help

Hi ! I'm sure you will get some good replies latter. My question is "Why are you so determined to run Vista?"
A 60 GB hard drive is very small these days. I'm sure a larger hard drive would help. There can be many reasons for high CPU.
Here's a short link about CPU usage.
Windows system CPU usage continues to peek or stays at 100%

The laptop originally is installed with vista. I wasn't sure if I could put other os on because of the license key tied to the motherboard. I'm not to familiar with software key issues and all that. Another reason acer only has vista drivers. Not sure were to get other drivers from The laptop is for my friend it belongs to her I'm just trying to get it working better for her she doesn't have much money right now.

Thank you

Hi! I'm out of my league here. There are many here that can help you! Vista is a dinosaur. IMHO you need to upgrade!

I'd love to upgrade to windows 7, but I can't find any windows 7 drivers from acer. I've heard vista drivers "may" work for 7. Before purchasing 7 I'd have to find out if I can activate a different license key on the acer motherboard.

If anyone could answer this I'd be very appreciative.