Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: maxheadroom on July 03, 2021, 12:58:55 PM
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I have a SSD and HDD in my PC and was wondering if there is a way of copying the full SSD to the HDD so if the SSD dies i still have a working PC.
If this is possible could someone explain how to do it, thanks.
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I use Macrium Reflect (free edition) for backing up,cloning, imaging my HDD's or SSD's, always worked well for me and quite friendly to use once the basics have been mastered.
Many other such utilities are available but Macrium Reflect is my personal preferance.
I found this youtube tutorial to be very informative on use of Macrium Reflect especially with respect to cloning/copying to/from media of different sizes without creating unusable disk space in the process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHCENfs87F4
The tutorial shows cloning HDD to SSD but the reverse procedure would be the same.
Creating a backup image of your HDD or SSD to a secure storage area is very simple and easily achieved with this utility.
Edit: Another good, simple Macrium Reflect youtube tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTsq-HHz0Ss
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Thanks for your help, i did a bit of searching and found a free backup prog and have backed up the OS to the HDD from the SSD i tried going into bios to change the boot order to see if it works but i cannot find away of switching to the HDD from the SSD so as i don't really know what i am doing i will leave it and hope if the SSD dies it will work, if not i haven't lost anything as until today i had no backup.
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When you plug into the 1st ATA it will work fine. Also Acronis is a good imaging tool and there is a free trial
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Thanks for your help, i did a bit of searching and found a free backup prog and have backed up the OS to the HDD from the SSD i tried going into bios to change the boot order to see if it works but i cannot find away of switching to the HDD from the SSD so as i don't really know what i am doing i will leave it and hope if the SSD dies it will work, if not i haven't lost anything as until today i had no backup.
If you have actually cloned the SSD the best check method is to substitute the drives in the PC and make sure it boots up on the HDD, that's assuming that your HDD is 2.5" format if the PC is a laptop.
If the PC in question is a desktop then this should be easily achievable by just swapping the SATA & power connectors may not be so easy if it's a laptop.
I prefer to adopt this method on my desktop PC which does not require any changes in the BIOS and is a positive test that the backup drive will actually boot should it ever be required.
However, a disk image stored to a secure medium should really be sufficient to restore your complete SSD to another drive of your choice should failure ever occur, the choice is yours!
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You could also configure the HDD in Sata 2 ( D drive) and copy data regularly to it from your C drive. That way if you needed to use it it would be ( more ) up to date. A simple batch program could achieve this trigger by a schedule task perhaps
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Thanks to all, i don't fancy opening the case so i will assume its done the job if it hasn't i haven't lost anything as until yesterday i didn't have a backup so today i am in a better place than yesterday.
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if you cloned and try to boot of the hdd whilst the ssd is still plugged in you may actually get an error as windows wont mount 2 drives at same time with same partition id, but it should work.
Without sacrificing a drive though, you should be good just making an image backup of all the critical partitions, and then make sure you have a usb bootable macrium to recover if the worst happens.
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Thanks the PC is booting fine with both drives working fine.
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make sure you have a usb bootable macrium to recover if the worst happens
Indeed very sound advice from Chrysalis and something I had omitted to mention regarding Macrium Reflect usage, very easily produced within Macrium with the dedicated utility.
With small USB drives costing very little now it makes sense to store a dedicated, suitably tested Macrium recovery USB disk in a safe location and also ensure your main HDD/SSD disk image is periodically refreshed.
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In what way did you transfer the files from your SSD to HDD ? Copy Pasting is very inappropriate. It can cause complications with the files. I recommend Cloning the disk if you want to transfer your files from one drive to another. There is software that could do this to you.
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This depends, if the SSD is NVME then a clone to a SATA drive may not boot, as the boot loader will be configured to look for an NVME drive not SATA.