Need Program for cloning a Data HDD

G'Day all. As above. "Need Program for cloning a Data HDD". Many moons ago I had Migrate Easy 7 by Acronis in the XP era. Now I have a need for the same sort of application. Cloning a data HDD over to a new HDD. I hesitate to download Acronis's Migrate Easy as it's brand name has been trashed lately.

Recommendations please (inc. Migrate Easy).

 

EaseUS Todo Backup (free or paid).

 

HDCLone, there is a free version (www.miray.de), if you want to clone a full disk.

 

CopyWipe may work for you and it is free.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php

 

Hi Aalf

Another free option from Keriver
http://www.keriver.com/disk_sync.html

Have a good day!

Jim

 

If it's a Data HDD I use Robocopy.

 

I'm gonna go with this most likely HDCLone Pro 85 euros. Any others? I'd rather buy one than trust a freebie.

CopyWipe what a scary name for a cloning tool.

Its gotta be a cloner like Migrate easy. Fast Copiers are yuk. These HDDs have errors even if its just a file extn stuff up or other simple things. Copiers shy at copying errors and generally jam waiting for verification. Cloners couldn't give a stuff & plow on regardless.
Nothing worse than coming home after work to find the copy job stopped at 9.33am due to verification request.

 

Have a look at Casper from fssdev.com, its quite easy to use and supports differential cloning (if you re-clone the source after some changes, only changes are copied, which speeds up the process). There are 2 modes: sector mode (default) and file mode which can be useful in some cases.

 

Robocopy doesn't do that.

robocopy D:\ H:\ *.* /e /efsraw /copyall /dcopy:t /r:0 /log:c:\rclog.txt /v /xj /tee

 

My recent experience with Terabyte Image for Windows is entirely positive. Plus it gives you the full works - image, copy, hot image, cold image, validate, clone, windows, linux, image mounting, individual file restoration..... everything.... and with fine support (in this forum too), and also remarkably cheap. http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.htm

 

didn't mean any offense Brian. forgive me if I overstepped the mark. If you recommend robocopy, i'm listening. downloading .exe from sourceforge now.
Is this right robocopy download?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/robocoprobocopy/

also once this cloning is done. What next? She has 3 x 3TB WD HDD. 1x original that gets updated. one that will be cloned irregularly to keep up to date. And the third as one of those 'live' full time backing up HDDs. Where they back up every hour or everyday with what ever is new/changed data.

What software for #3. constant backup?

 

Robocopy is already included in windows
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145(v=ws.10).aspx
Brian just gave you the command string to perform an exact copy of your files, which should be run from command line or as a batch.

Another great tool is fast copy

Panagiotis

 

Gotta be a GUI for her.
Fast copy stops on file errors doesn't it?

 

If you enable the option "NonStop (ignore errors)" it will continue until all the operations are completed.

http://ipmsg.org/tools/fastcopy.html.en

Panagiotis

 

AaLF,

No offense at all. My brief reply was just that. Brief.

Use three versions of the above command line. Three batch files. You could schedule the last batch file to run hourly and Robocopy will only copy files that have changed in the last hour. Say you have 500 GB of data and you add a jpg then only the jpg will be copied.

Which OS is she using?

Edit... for the mirroring backups, change the /e switch to /mir

You must run the batch file as an Administrator.

 

Win7 x 64. Its gotta have a quality GUI dude. No way out of it.

 

But why? It's automated. You don't see anything happening.

 

That's what might worry her.
I'll set it up as a demo. What do i do. I too am fallible with this stuff.

 

OK. Which drive (or folder) do you want to copy? What is the target folder?

 

TEST HDD-
TARGET = 1TB empty HDD @ drive F:
SOURCE = 1TB HDD with 5 partitions - @ G,I,J,K,L

The real HDdrives I'm waiting on will be: 1x no partitions & 1x2 partitions.

AaLF

 

AaLF,

Robocopy works better when it doesn't have to copy the hidden root folders. So try this test on the G: drive. Create a folder in the root of the G: drive called AaLF. Move all files and folders into AaLF. Create a folder in the F: drive called Backup_G.

Create a New Text Document and change the extension from .txt to .cmd. Rename it to backup_g.cmd. Right click and choose Edit. Copy/Paste these lines in (DON'T type them as you will miss the wrapping. There should be 3 lines) and click Save.

Code:

@echo off
if not defined RunTask set RunTask=1 & start "robocopy" /min %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /c "%0" & goto :EOF
robocopy G:\AaLF F:\Backup_G *.* /mir /copyall /dcopy:t /r:0 /log:c:\rclog.txt /v /xj /tee

Right click backup_g.cmd and click Run as Administrator. A log is written to the C: drive.

 

Try the above solution first. The following seems to work when backing up from the root. That is, no AaLF folder. But I'm still testing.

Code:

@echo off
if not defined RunTask set RunTask=1 & start "robocopy" /min %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /c "%0" & goto :EOF
robocopy G:\ F:\Backup_G *.* /mir /XD "System Volume Information" Recycler $Recycle.bin /copyall /dcopy:t /r:0 /log:c:\rclog.txt /v /xj /tee
attrib -s -h F:\Backup_G

 

I've been using EaseUS Disk Copy Home lately. It does not install anything on your computer - the download lets you create a bootable USB flash drive or CD which you then use to do the cloning.

It works really well, and I find it particularly useful as it is able to clone hard drives with bad sectors - you can get it to ignore all read errors and continue cloning the drive, whereas other cloning software tends to stop the clone when bad sectors are encountered.

Also, the Home edition is free.

 

Nice find!
Personally i use Clonezilla and always test the HD for errors before cloning. But i can see how EaseUS Disk Copy Home will be a useful tool for data recovery (clone to a healthy hd before attempting to recover).

 

Quite often cloned damaged hard drives boot into Windows and everything works - I've even had a cloned drive work where the original drive wouldn't. There may be some file issues on the clone drive so I always run a chkdsk /f on the cloned drive after booting it.