Recommended utility to clone a disk?

[Violet_Shift]

Hi everyone,

I've had a RAID for the past decade or so and I've grown to despise it. I want to toss all the data on it onto a single disk (I've bought a large WD Gold) since I've learned the hard way that RAID beats the shit out of disks, I'm sick of replacing them.

There is about 6GB of data on the RAID. Everything mission-critical is backed up, but I want to just copy the stuff off it, no fuss. I've put the new drive into an external enclosure (space limitations in my main PC another reason why I don't want to deal with having 4 disks).

What's a good utility to do this with? DiskGenius seems to be free, but I can't tell if it's reliable since it's the only free option. But if it's good I'll go with it, and take MD5 sums before and after to make sure everything matches.

Thanks a lot for help!

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Clonezilla is about the best cloner.

I have DG but haven't used it to much successfully at the item I used it for.

 

[cvaldes]

If I am creating a bootable clone of a Windows system drive, I'll use a third party utility like Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect, NTI Echo, whatever. All three of these are either free or were included with one of my m.2 SSD purchases. The aforementioned Clonezilla is fine.

I used Macrium Reflect last week with no issues. It's pretty brainless.

For a regular Windows data drive, I'll just use the native command line robocopy utility which usually has a syntax like

robocopy F:\ G:\ /MIR

For cloning macOS boot drives I've used the excellent Carbon Copy Cloner. Never bothered using it for vanilla data drives although I'm sure it would work fine.

There's also the dd command line utility for *nix style operating systems. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I used dd to clone Unix system drives.

For Linux and macOS data drives I typically use a tarpipe, like

tar -cpO foo | (cd /mnt/new_volume ; tar -xvpf - )

No reason to spend any money on this.

 

[Tahagomizer]

I use Disk Genius for quite some time with no problems, so if it works for you (with additional checksum verification), there's no need to over complicate things. If you copy data visible in Windows, Teracopy has an option to verify data after copying.

 

[Bones]

Here's something else that may be of use, depending on the way you are trying to do the job and the basic version is free.

balenaEtcher - Flash OS images to SD cards & USB drives

 

[Violet_Shift]

It's not bootable, it's just a pile of data. Ideally I'd want something with built in verification. Does Macrium Reflect do that?

 

[arbiter]

Hi everyone,

I've had a RAID for the past decade or so and I've grown to despise it. I want to toss all the data on it onto a single disk (I've bought a large WD Gold) since I've learned the hard way that RAID beats the shit out of disks, I'm sick of replacing them.

There is about 6GB of data on the RAID. Everything mission-critical is backed up, but I want to just copy the stuff off it, no fuss. I've put the new drive into an external enclosure (space limitations in my main PC another reason why I don't want to deal with having 4 disks).

What's a good utility to do this with? DiskGenius seems to be free, but I can't tell if it's reliable since it's the only free option. But if it's good I'll go with it, and take MD5 sums before and after to make sure everything matches.

Thanks a lot for help!

if its just copying data then teracopy can has and check after

 

[DaemonForce]

Is it just a bunch of dumps of data or is there a preferred structure to it? I don't clone my drives anymore unless they're virtual copies and there's very good reason for that. Way back in my ~2002 WinPE days of copying entire drives with WinImage or doing backups with my own software is a lost cause. If you have anything BIG that needs to be in a fast access position on the disk like I typically do, it's just going to make more sense to copy everything over manually in a specific order for tiered contig. Just mind anything that depends on specific disk format (NTFS) and chunk sizes like 4K or 16K.

 

[ThrashZone]

It's not bootable, it's just a pile of data. Ideally I'd want something with built in verification. Does Macrium Reflect do that?

Hi,
Reflect only verifies system images.
It's also not free anymore it only has a 30 trial after which turns into worthlessware.

So I'd opt for disk genius it's more than just a cloner.

Older winpe recovery will be obsoleted after this update is installed only a new one will be bootable

Hi,
Looks like this update breaks winpe

KB5016061: Secure Boot DB and DBX variable update events - Microsoft Support

support.microsoft.com

KB5036210: Deploying Windows UEFI CA 2023 certificate to Secure Boot Allowed Signature Database (DB) - Microsoft Support

support.microsoft.com

Updating Microsoft Secure Boot keys

Windows IT Pro Blog: Microsoft, in collaboration with our ecosystem partners, is preparing to roll out replacement certificates that’ll set new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Certificate Authorities (CAs) trust anchors in Secure Boot for the future. Look out for Secure Boot...

www.elevenforum.com

Windows Security update for Secure Boot - Knowledgebase 8.0 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

knowledgebase.macrium.com

 

[Courier 6]

Acronis true image

 

[DaemonForce]

Macrium may as well be free, at least in its bootable WinPE form. If I ever custom up a Win10/11 image for it, manually adding the software will be a no brainer. I don't use it but it gets enough help requests that I may as well just add it. People are kinda helpless and set in their ways like that to the point that help desks are never going away. Teracopy is good for verifying file lists but I'm not sure about actual data verification. Is it the kind of stuff prone to corruption? I have a ReFS for that.

 

[ThrashZone]

Macrium may as well be free, at least in its bootable WinPE form. If I ever custom up a Win10/11 image for it, manually adding the software will be a no brainer. I don't use it but it gets enough help requests that I may as well just add it. People are kinda helpless and set in their ways like that to the point that help desks are never going away. Teracopy is good for verifying file lists but I'm not sure about actual data verification. Is it the kind of stuff prone to corruption? I have a ReFS for that.

Hi,
Yeah I'll probably make a newer reflect PE 11 required after the windows updates I posted earlier to see what it does and how long it lasts
I don't see reflect adding some sort of expiring timer to neuter PE 11 flash media after 30 days passes lol

But I did read a bit and found out older PE 10 flash media created with reflect v6-7 will still work as they always have if secure boot is disabled which makes the updates a nothing burger unless someone can't disable secure boot in bios that is.

Older versions of Macrium Reflect Free (Windows) | Uptodown

Download older versions of Macrium Reflect Free for Windows. All of the older versions of Macrium Reflect Free have no viruses and are totally free on Uptodown.

macrium-reflect-free.en.uptodown.com

Or filehippo
All versions of Macrium Reflect for Windows - FileHippo.com

 

[Violet_Shift]

Well, fate hit me hard.

Just when I was preparing to do it, one of my RAID's drives decided to die, so now it's in degraded mode and that precludes cloning.

I'm using teracopy. Doing quite a good job of things. I should be able to get most stuff off this dumpster fire.

Thanks a lot everyone!

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Only raid I'll ever use

 

[Violet_Shift]

So, the saga continues.

Data saved from the RAID (great success).

While I was at it with a free trial of Macrium Reflect I figured I'd replace my aging primary SSD.

I cloned it to a new, larger one. Forgot to set it to auto-fill the empty space but let Windows extend the partition, no problems.

All well so far.

Booted into the new drive, runs for a few minutes, then BSODs with a "PAGE FAULT IN UNPAGED AREA" thingy.

Started up again, nothing weird happened since.

Did I do something wrong to cause this? I'm thinking there might have been something wonky with the page file that was rectified when I booted again after the BSOD, but not sure.

Everything looks normal.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
I don't clone but first rule is after completed hard power off.
Remove original and only leave clone installed.
Boot to bios and turn off secure boot really should do this before cloning hehe

If not windows will usually see the clone and disable the boot loader of the clone meaning no boot.