houdel Loc: Chase, Michigan USA

I have two nearly identical Inspiron 17R 7720 laptops; one which I bought new from Dell 4 years ago and one which I bought used a couple of weeks ago. Both have identical hardware with the following exceptions: my original has a Core i7 processor and a 32GB mSATA drive while the new one has a Core i5 processor and no mSATA drive. Hard drives, video, memory etc. are all identical on the two computers.

The mSATA drive as implemented by Dell in this configuration works a little bit differently then a normal mSATA drive; it holds only the OS and is used as an OS accelerator while all user programs and data are run off the HDD.

I purchased an identical mSATA drive for the new computer and am trying to clone the mSATA and HDD from the old computer so I can have two identical computers. I tried cloning the drives using Macrium Reflect. The HDD cloned successfully, but Reflect only finds a 8GB unformatted partition on the old mSATA drive, not the whole 32GB. I cloned the new mSATA drive and tried it in my old computer, it properly identified the drive but said it was not a valid RAID 0 volume and wanted me to change my drive configuration to non-RAID.

Any thoughts as to how I can properly clone the old mSATA drive to the new one?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I've copied a hard drive onto an SSD but never SSD to SSD. Try EaseUS or one of the others mentioned in this article. I don't why the RAID configuration is a problem. I'm sure someone will have an answer.

Do you think maintaining both computers in identical configurations will be a hassle?

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2421302,00.asp

houdel Loc: Chase, Michigan USA

The hard drive in the old computer has 4 years worth of accumulated software - MS Office, 2 versions of Photoshop Elements, 2 versions of Corel PaintShop Pro, MS Office, IOLO System Mechanic, my Canon Printer software plus quite a bit more. The new computer has Win8 and practically nothing else. Since both computers have identical hardware other than the mSATA drive, I figured cloning the old hard drive would be a lot simpler than digging out a bunch of install discs and reinstalling and configuring everything.

As for data, I have a separate 1TB external hard drive that I use with MS SynchToy to backup my user libraries. I run SynchToy once a week or so to keep the data current. I bought an extra HDD identical to the drive in both computers and an external USB case for it. I'm figuring once every month or two I will do an incremental clone from my main computer's HDD to the backup computer HDD and the backup external HDD. That way I will have three identical working drives plus a backup data drive so I should be covered for about any disaster.

SynchToy only takes a couple of minutes to synchronize my data files and I expect the incremental cloning to be about the same per drive, so I figure 5 minutes once a week and a half hour or so once a month will keep everything coordinated.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I hate reinstalling software. I now use SyncBack SE, similar to SyncToy. Backup is very fast if I do it often enough.

Samsung has a free program that lets you copy an HDD to an SSD, but when I tried it from HDD to HDD, it said it could not find the Samsung SSD.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=samsung%20ssd%20copy%20software

stonecherub Loc: Tucson, AZ

As a bona fide paranoid, I regularly (about once a month) clone my C:/ drive (SSD) to another SSD (they're cheap enough) using Macrium Reflect (no cost). I usually check to see if the cloned drive boots but don't use it because too many licenses need to be reset and that's annoying. The clone goes to my wife's studio a block away.

Data drives (3) get disconnected and the clone process takes about 20 minutes.

I do this because somebody is eventually going to figure out how to install ransomware without me having to do anything and I'll be ready.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

If it's a clone, shouldn't it work without having to enter key numbers?

stonecherub Loc: Tucson, AZ

I thought that as well but the one time I tried it, four of my tools required re-entering the numbers.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Kinda defeats the purpose of cloning. I read "Ask Leo" occasionally, and he recommends cloning the C drive in case of drive failure. When I replaced my HDD with an SSD, all I did was clone it, and it was ready to go.

https://askleo.com/ask-leo-search-results/?q=cloning%20a%20drive