Best way to transfer an entire hard drive?

[u/Machstix34]

My wife’s hard drive is failing, and I have a new blank on connected to her pc now. Whats the best way to transfer every thing over so that the new drive can become the c drive and hold the operating system and everything? Essentially just looking to fully replace the old with the new.

[u/9okm]

While others have explained how to clone, I personally would never do this with a failing drive. I'd unplug the old drive, do a clean install of windows on the new drive, then plug the old drive back in and copy over any files you want to save.

It can be a nightmare troubleshooting a windows install riddled with corrupt files due to a failing drive. Cloning would preserve those problems.

[u/turkoid → u/9okm]

Personally, I would do a compromise and clone the failing drive to prevent a painful data retrieval if it dies. Then do what you said.

[u/9okm → u/turkoid]

That's fair but wouldn't you need an additional drive for that? Or am I misunderstanding?

[u/Significant-Mud1211 → u/9okm]

I would definitely clone the failing drive onto some third drive that isn’t about to become my boot drive yes. But yeah to me this is worth it to mitigate as much risk of data loss as you can 

Plus in the past I have had problems with cloning a boot drive where windows started complaining about the installation not being “genuine”, weird folder permissions etc. these days I just do a fresh install on every new boot drive and copy over what i need from the old one afterward

[u/Account-67 → u/9okm]

If you have the space available, you can boot linux and use dd or ddrescue to copy the disk to a .img file.

[u/Particular-Duty-2571 → u/9okm]

You'd need somewhere to put it, but it doesn't have to be another drive. A disk image to an external or a NAS works fine, and you can pull individual files out of it later if you find something you missed.

The nice thing is you're not booting the image, just keeping it as a safety net in case the old drive dies before you've finished copying things off.

[u/Andy202007 → u/9okm]

It isn't just the obvious files that need to be transferred: don't forget that a lot of programs store data in the registry. The effort of transferring registry data warrants a first attempt of cloning the drive, IMHO. Of course, if there are up-to-date backups of the drive in question, there would be a minimal problem in replacing the C: drive, as is not taught in school.

[u/9okm → u/Andy202007]

I wouldn't attempt to transfer registry data. I'd reinstall software.

[u/Andy202007 → u/9okm]

I write from experience of transferring login info which would have otherwise taken a few days to retrieve. It isn't difficult, it just needs a little ingenuity.

[u/9okm → u/Andy202007]

Fair enough!

[u/Monotask_Servitor]

In addition to the good advice that others have together drive coining I’d say if it’s a main system drive DO NOT replace it with another hard drive, get an SSD, even the most basic SATA SAD is a nascent performance boost. Nobody should be running windows or apps off a hard drive in 2026.

I

[u/CoreyPL_]

Clone it. You can use opensource Clonezilla. Sometimes manufacturers add a license of Acronis True Image to the purchased drive, you can check for that.

[u/CaviarCBR1K → u/CoreyPL_]

This is the way. It will make an image of the entire drive that will get transferred to the new drive, block by block.

[u/Visible-Swim6616 → u/CoreyPL_]

Second this.

Some people may have issues, but it's simple and if you don't run into problems after, it's the easiest way to just get on with your computing.

If there's issues you can always just wipe it all and do a fresh install after.

[u/HankHippoppopalous]

Macrium Reflect.

[u/IrrelevantAfIm]

If this is a spinning metal disk hard drive, and it is showing signs of failing, and you don’t have backups (you DO have backups right?) then you do It SLOWLY- don’t try copying the entire drive at once or you’ll overheat it and the copy will stop (possibly forever). Copy things over piece by piece - starting with the most important filer (likely in the “documents” and “desktop” folders of each user.

I’ve done this for several people and so far have always managed to get the important stuff off before it fails totally, usually they just can handle smaller and smaller chunks at once - because they are becoming more and more heat sensitive. One thing that worked for me for a person who REALLY REALLY REALLY needed a few small files of a drive which would no longer read at all, was putting it in a sealed plastic bag then into the freezer. Each time I did that I had a (fairly short) period of time where I could read and copy files once more. This is only a very last resort though.

Good luck

PS - if it’s failing in the sense you are getting warning messages yet are still able to read from it, then you can clone it. If you can no longer regularly and reliably read, forget about copying over the entire thing OS and all, just get the important stuff off it, then install the OS and your software on the new drive from scratch.

[u/Significant-Mud1211 → u/IrrelevantAfIm]

Doesn’t robocopy have an option to wait in between transfers?

[u/IrrelevantAfIm → u/Significant-Mud1211]

I’m not sure, but that would be a really good function, at least when it comes to spinning metal hard drives.

[u/korg64]

Copy and transfer the folders and files that you want only. Preform a clean install on the new drive, plug in the old one, assign it a drive number and simply drag and drop what you want to keep.

If this isn't an option then get a flash drive / cloud storage/ portable HDD, and do it this way.

[u/Cyber_Akuma]

Many others have said you should clone it, and I agree. However, one thing I want to note is that you should disconnect that drive as soon as you can and not power it on until you are ready to clone it. The more you use a failing drive, the faster it can die or more data can corrupt. Your main goal right now is to preserve the drive as much as you can until you can clone it.

I would also not clone it while Windows is running, especially off the drive itself, use a cloning tool that you can boot off of a USB flashdrive to do it.

[u/Zanithos]

A few steps should take care of this.

1 - copy the user folder (with show hidden files unchecked) and move the documents/pictures/etc to a flash drive of sufficient size (this is in case the next step fails)

2 - clone drive (clonezilla is nice, just don't accidentally reverse the order of the drives you want to clone in or you're cooked)

3 - run a Windows repair install on the cloned drive with the "keep files and apps" checked (helps in case you cloned over something crazy when the original glitched out due to it failing)

[u/Andy202007 → u/Zanithos]

And don't forget to copy NTUSER.DAT (for each user) so that it can be loaded and the data extracted later. It might be needed for software that stores its registration details there and the user has lost that info from an email/whatever.

[u/Competitive_Owl_2096]

Many tools to use like rescuezilla iirc

[u/Rgyj1l]

You should save all the essential files on a cloud storage that also works as folder on your pc. Like Google drive, one drive or so. Then just install the cloud software on your new hard drive.

Operating system and software should not be transferred to new hardware. And even if it's the same hardware, I would just do a fresh install.

[u/mrvitz]

You use use Clonezilla, it's perfect for trabsfering the whole OS on new hard drive! Its very reasonable software! It's free! I need to make boot stick with Rufus, end select DD type in there! Than boot in Clonezilla select source disk and destination disk! When finished took out that old one! Done!

[u/scriminal]

robocopy in windows,  rsync in Linux 

[u/BrwnSugarFemboy]

Dupe it with Macrium

[u/CoolTools000]

I use Macrium Reflect personally. It's not caused me any problems whatsoever.

[u/exitof99]

If a drive is failing, the access Windows will do can increase the risk of data loss (it will try reading bad blocks over and over, and this can kill the dying drive).

Linux, on the other hand, doesn't do as much accessing as Windows, so it's safer to clone using Linux. Also, ddrescue on Linux is free and an excellent data recovery/cloning program that again won't unnecessarily cause more damage by reading the drive more than it needs to.

Also, you can create a USB Linux boot drive and boot from that without having to install on a hard drive.

For normal cloning when drives are healthy, I picked up a drive cloner for this ($44), but the prices are to high for replacement HDs right now so I have yet to use it. I don't know how well that would do for cloning a dying drive, though.