Cheapest and easiest way to clone a hard drive?

Forgive me if my terminology is all wrong, but I'll try to best explain what I need.

When booting up, Windows 8 has started giving me messages that my hard drive (a Samsung HD502HJ) is failing (normally I use sleep mode when away from the machine, and only reboot for updates etc). I've run the various Windows disk utilities on it, but they don't detect any problems beyond this one message I get during start up.

Regardless of the test results, I guess I'll need to replace the drive just to be on the safe side. But, I'm wondering what the best way is to clone all my current data onto the new drive so I won't need to redownload or reinstall all the hundreds of gigs of data (Steam games, music, and the like) that I currently have installed.

Should I just use Windows to back up and restore, or is there a faster way to simply use some other utility to just copy/clone everything over? I don't mind buying some utility if needed (if the price isn't ridiculous), as what's most important to me is simply getting this done with the least amount of time and effort on my end as possible.

Thanks for any tips. In my 25~ years of PC use, I've never been in a situation where I've needed to know much more about this type of thing other than simply manually backing up a few important files, throwing my old drive away, and then starting over.

Haven't done this for years but last time I did I used DriveImage XML, which was free and worked fine. It appears to still be free.

George Lucas

or acronis true image

Perfect, thanks for the tips. Googling this stuff was leading me nowhere useful fast.

Run advanced SMART diagnostics from withing Speedfan to see what errors exactly are being reported before you proceed any further.

Windows backup and restore is godawful buggy as of Win7; no clue if it's any better on Win8. I rely on Acronis for all my imaging needs, Driveimage XML is fine but the last time I used it I had issues with it not parsing the MBR correctly, YMMV.

If the drive has errors in the partition table Acronis will take a dump and you will either need to perform sector-level drive repair using something like HDD Regenerator or Spinrite before you can get a successful clone.

Good luck!

I'm a little down on Acronis right now, because my dad just managed to press the button to restore an image....

From his Windows XP laptop onto his new Windows 7 laptop.

Yeah, that didn't go so well when the laptop rebooted.

cheapest way to clone? clonezilla. easiest? yeah, Acronis. it's still shit, though. i'm partial Macrium Reflect nowadays as my go-to non-Acronis Windows-based backup/image tool.

when i hear of Spinrite (and recommendations to use it) nowadays, i think of Ye Olde Snake Oil(TM). i haven't had a situation in the post-PATA era that it has done me any good.

HDD Regenerator, on the other hand, is fucking magical.

Acronis is nowhere near as fast as Macrium Reflect for some reason.

I took your advice and downloaded and ran this tonight. I ran the "Extended test" and everything came back perfect as far as I can tell, at least based on my results and the help file for the program (see image):



Since the error/failure message I've been getting only started showing up the moment I installed Windows 8, but no other utility seems to be able to tell me exactly what the problems actually is, I'm starting to wonder if there's just some weird compatibility, settings, or detection issue or something going on.

Maybe I should just figure out a way to back all this crap up rather than outright replace the drive, but either way I'm gonna need something to store several hundreds gigs of info, assuming I want to back-up all these installed games/programs.

Noted!

What does "perform an in-depth analysis" come back with?

The big red flag I see after running that is the overall performance sitting at 20%. I guess I'll need to recheck my HDD cables as well, if the Power Cycle Count info is to be believed.

I find it strange the two reports give such different info for the performance.

What about an easy free clone utility to swap my old SSD with a new one? My old SSD has the OS which I want to be on the new SSD.

Acronis True Image is, again, probably the easiest solution. I had to do exactly this last summer and it worked without a hitch. I plugged both drives in and then ran the disk clone - it rebooted and ran the clone and once it finished I unplugged the old drive and told the BIOS to boot the new drive and it was like I hadn't changed a thing.

It's not free although they run some pretty good deals on Newegg from time to time to pick it up very cheap. As useful programs go if you don't have any other imaging utility already it's probably not a bad program to own a copy of.

Welp, got my new drive this morning. Gonna see about running with Acronis. Here goes nothing.

Thanks for all the feedback.

EDIT: Aaaaaand we're back. Thanks again.

Because I'm a cheap bastard I decided to use Paragon Migrate (instead of Acronis) to move my OS from a standard HDD to my shiny new SSD. Three button clicks, 15 minutes and a reboot later my SSD is merrily up and running. I'm constantly amazed at what the tech geeks of the world make possible for us clumsy oafs who couldn't code our way out of a wet paper bag.