Cloning Windows 7

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Zeno

Member
I've been trying to clone my Windows 7 hard drive using Clonezilla. But I can't seem to create a bootable copy. I've been told to use other cloning software, but that software seems rather expensive. So instead I've been looking at these cloning/docking stations. They seem to actually be cheaper than cloning software, plus they double as docking stations of extra data drives.

I'm looking at the following two units.

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with these:

This one is only $36.99 that's cheaper than some cloning software!

Aukey® SuperSpeed USB 3.0 to SATA Dual Hard Drive Duplicator / Clone Docking Station for 2.5" & 3.5" HDD, SSD [12TB Support], DS-B3
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There's also this one for $35.99

ORICO Dual Bay USB3.0 Duplicating Docking Station
DOC-ORI-6629US3.jpg


I wouldn't mind having a docking station anyway. The fact that it also clones is fantastic.

Just wondering how well these units work? Anyone have any experience with these?
 
Z

Zeno

Member
Thank Aldan,

The drive I have is a Western Digital so I give their Acronis True Image software a shot. I like the fact that they also have a nice detailed instruction manual to go with it.

Hopefully this will work.

Those cloning stations sure look simple to use though. Just stick the drives in and press a button. Can't get easier than that.
 
A

aldan

Active Member
never used one myself.i use acronis to clone my hdd to my secondary drive as a backup.if my first hdd goes down for whatever reason i simply boot the the secondary and clone it to the first one.back up in no time.
 
Z

Zeno

Member
I bought the Aukey. I'm going to give it a shot and see how it does. I have three notebook computers and I want to back up all of them with complete operating systems, etc. So I'll be cloning a lot of drives.

I'm getting to the point where I have so much software on these computers I just don't want to be bothered with the hassle of an unprepared drive failure. That really sucks.

So I'm going to clone all three notebooks so they each have a hard drive back-up.

I think it will be nice having the Aukey as a disk docking station too. For $36 it will be well worth it, providing it works well. It has pretty good reviews on Amazon. And the service department at Aukey seems anxious to please. They've been answering any bad reviews offering to help any dissatisfied customers.

So it sounds like a worthwhile investment for my purposes.
 
P

Peakkk

New Member
I'm using free disk copy to clone my Win 7 disk for the preparing of upgrading to Win 10.
It's an old freeware, but very stable.
 
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Z

Zeno

Member
UPDATE:

Unfortunately it's not good news yet.

I bought the Aukey and I've been using it as a disk docking station to back up a lot of data files. It works just fine for that and I really like having it for that purpose.

Today, I finally go around to cloning the drive in my notebook computer. I'm running Windows 7 on a Compaq Presario CQ56.

The cloning operation seemed to go along just fine. No problem there. But then when I installed the newly cloned drive in the computer it won't boot. The following error message:

1565.image_5F00_thumb_5F00_3C9725FC.png


I also didn't think to make a Windows repair disk before I did this.

In any case, when I re-installed the original drive the computer booted back up normally.

But why won't it boot up on the clone drive?

~~~~~~

The other thing I did after that was place the newly cloned drive in the Aukey as a docking station to see what's on it. But that only leads to a "signature collision" error, and so it won't mount or display the contents of the drive.

Obviously the clone worked and the new drive has the same signature as the system drive in the Notebook.

So the clone seems to have worked.

But why won't it boot when installed in the notebook.

This doesn't make any sense. If it's identical to the drive I took out then how does the notebook know that it's not even the original drive?

It should just boot right up.

I don't know what to do at this point.

What a bummer.

I have two more notebooks I want to clone.

I sure hope I can get past this problem.
 
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