Hard drive copying...

[catso]

I have a Win 7 desktop computer that recently reports a hard drive failure warning and advises me to backup and then repair or replace the drive, also the drive sometimes 'ticks' for a while after startup and when this happens the computer responds very slowly, so I think the warning maybe correct.

The drive that is failing is the 'C' drive that contains the OS and other software but the computer does have two other hard drives which are used for data storage.

Is there an easy way/programme available to copy/clone the 'C' drive to one of the other drives so that I can simply set that to be the main drive rather than having to re-install all the various software again?

I can easily merge the data on the two backup drives to one only so that one drive can be formatted to use as the 'C' drive.

I recall doing something similar many years ago on a win95/98 computer but IIRC the replacement drive had to be formatted to the same size as the old drive although I don't recall what programme I used?

On this PC the 'C' drive is 160gb and the two other drives are 500gb each.

Any suggestions?...

[Ste1987]

I know there's plenty of software for cloning HDD's, but, I could be wrong here, if you create a Mirror partition on one of your other HDD's in Computer Management, it clones all the data from the drive. Then if that drive borks or gets removed, the computer will just use the mirror partition as normal. Hard to explain, for me, but do you know where I'm coming from?

Of course, if the HDD is on it's way out, any kind of cloning might knacker the drive completely, as it's having to work hard to copy all the data. How much data is on it?

[catso]

There's not much data on the HDD and nothing that's not backed up. 'Properties' tells me there's 114gb free and all the data (my documents etc.) is on one of the other drives (182gb free). The third drive actually has a backup done last week of the 'C' drive but is not used for anything other than backups and shows 236gb free but I'm happy to move everything off this drive if I can use it as the new 'C' drive.

I'm just trying to avoid having to re-install win 7, along with the endless updates (PC is a few years old) plus the other software as I know that will take an age to do and it was working fine until this disc problem reared it's head.

[RizzoTheRat]

Unless you have much stuff that needs setting up on the disk, it doesn't actually take long to install Win7 from scratch. Updates might need an hour or two but can carry on in the background, I usually find setting up my e-mail accounts takes the longest. If you're thinking of upgrading to Win10 at any point then doing it now means you start with a nice clean Win10 install instead of an upgraded Win7 with associated clutter.

If you want to go with the cloning options, CloneZilla is free, but a bit more complicated to use than paid for options like Ghost or True Image.

If you're buying a new drive it might come with some cloning software, I bought a Samsung SSD recently and it came with a CD of utilities and instructions on how to clone the C drive to the new disk.

[Mr Pointy]

Try Macrium Reflect:
http://www.macrium.com

It's free & very easy to use with excellent online manuals & guides. I've just cloned my HDD to an SDD & it's the best software I found. The drives don't have to be the same size & you can change partition sizes as part of the copying process.

A new SSD for the new OS drive would be a good idea as well.

[buggalugs]

Cloning a failing drive can be awkward, it will tend to get to the damaged area and bomb out. Some software can be told to ignore errors and continue regardless but then it's pot luck if you end up with something useable at the end. The more you use the drive in the mean time the less likely a good outcome is.