Easiest way to migrate from one hard drive to a new one?

[LordJezo]

I dont want to get stuck in the "This file is in use" stuff that can happen when programs are running and you try to do a simple copy paste. I will be moving off of my current 300 GB onto a new 1 TB that I bought, is there some kind of boot utility or something that I can use to make the copy? This is not my OS drive but it still does have a lot of stuff on it that loads when booted into Windows.

 

[Priddle]

What Windows version do you have?

Windows 7 does a System Image. I managed to copy a RAID 1 array that was using 2 disks that had 3 partitions onto a new RAID 1 array. You just need an external hard drive to do it.

You can also try Easeus Paritiion Manager http://www.partition-tool.com/

I copied an OS partition and a non-OS partition using this utility too a couple of years ago.

 

[King Icewind]

Gparted. Load it up on a bootable disc and throw it in your comoputer,

 

[omniscence]

Use a linux live cd and do:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=8k

Make sure you use the right drives with hdparm -vI first.

 

[ethraax]

Have you tried booting into safe mode? Just spam the hell out of F8 when your computer starts booting, and select "Safe Mode". Theoretically, it should prevent whatever keeps locking your files from running.

You may have tried it already, but it's a hell of a lot easier than anything else that's been posted so far.

 

[LordJezo]

I am running W7Ultimate.

I didn't know about the image tool, does that take into account open files?

I didn't think of the safe mode thing, that sounds like the easiest way. Whats the best way to do a copy and paste? I have used xxcopy tool for large copies before, is that the best way? Doing a copy and paste in the Windows GUI always causes me problems.

And now that it has been mentioned I do have a gparted disc someplace around here, never thought it did anything but make partitions, not copy them, but if it does, that would solve everything.

 

[OldMX]

If one of the disks is Seagate or Western Digital, just get the freeware version of Acronis True Image they provide, then make the boot disk to clone one disk to the other one.

 

[ethraax]

I use TeraCopy. I like it because it integrates into Windows, so whenever you just copy/paste, it uses TeraCopy instead of the standard Windows copy. It has some nice features, like copy waiting and multi-file read/writes.

 

[LordJezo]

GParted just finished a copy/paste of the old hard drive onto the new one. When it was done the GParted screen did show that the new drive had the same amount used as the old drive so I shut everything down and booted back into Windows.

The new drive is completely empty, as if nothing I just did accomplished anything.

Odd.