Potential SSD failure, recommendations for disk imaging
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It seems, according to Dell's own tools, that my trusty Precision's ssd is on the way out and they are accordingly dispatching a replacement. Under normal circumstances I would usually take this as an opportunity to start afresh. I keep backups of all data so normally it's not the end of the world to lose a few hours, or days as the the case may be to rebuild the machine and get it back to the way I like it. Time is not on my side at present so I need to cheat, taking a full image of the existing disk in order to restore it to the replacement when it arrives next week. I've never tried this approach before and would be keen to know if others have and with what degree of success. Assuming that indeed it has been successful what would be their recommendation of a suitable product to carry this out. The ssd in question has a capacity of 500gb. I have a NAS available with enough room to accommodate a backup of this size, alternatively I could always access some cloud storage.
Lately I got a brand new computer and wanted to migrate from it's 512GB SSD to a 2TB one. I use AOMEI and I'm glad of doing it (Thanks OG), but seen that it doesn't cope well with UEFI so I was not able to do that. I had a license of ACRONIS 2020 which worked very well. But, and this could be interesting for you, some SSD come with the right to download a free of charge utility like that. Hope this helps.
www.robotecnik.com[^] - robots, CNC and PLC programming
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Me too
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
me too
diligent hands rule....
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me too
diligent hands rule....
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It seems, according to Dell's own tools, that my trusty Precision's ssd is on the way out and they are accordingly dispatching a replacement. Under normal circumstances I would usually take this as an opportunity to start afresh. I keep backups of all data so normally it's not the end of the world to lose a few hours, or days as the the case may be to rebuild the machine and get it back to the way I like it. Time is not on my side at present so I need to cheat, taking a full image of the existing disk in order to restore it to the replacement when it arrives next week. I've never tried this approach before and would be keen to know if others have and with what degree of success. Assuming that indeed it has been successful what would be their recommendation of a suitable product to carry this out. The ssd in question has a capacity of 500gb. I have a NAS available with enough room to accommodate a backup of this size, alternatively I could always access some cloud storage.
I've used Paragon Hard Disk Manager tools for many years - as well as imaging, can also convert directly to a runnable VMWare VM etc. Can be booted from a WinPE USB stick (or Linux) so doesn't need the host to be bootable...
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It seems, according to Dell's own tools, that my trusty Precision's ssd is on the way out and they are accordingly dispatching a replacement. Under normal circumstances I would usually take this as an opportunity to start afresh. I keep backups of all data so normally it's not the end of the world to lose a few hours, or days as the the case may be to rebuild the machine and get it back to the way I like it. Time is not on my side at present so I need to cheat, taking a full image of the existing disk in order to restore it to the replacement when it arrives next week. I've never tried this approach before and would be keen to know if others have and with what degree of success. Assuming that indeed it has been successful what would be their recommendation of a suitable product to carry this out. The ssd in question has a capacity of 500gb. I have a NAS available with enough room to accommodate a backup of this size, alternatively I could always access some cloud storage.
My personal aproach to imaging is a Linux live medium and dd. While dd not having any sort of a progress bar is a PITA, it works fine for low-level copying of disks.
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Me too. The paid version. I can also say that I have used it more than once to restore an image (of C drive: 500GB and D drive: 500GB) and it worked flawlessly and its performance was excellent.
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I was going to recommend Clonezilla as well, until I read the paragraph where OP wants to save the disk image to a NAS. Maybe it's because I've never really looked into its more advanced options, but isn't Clonezilla simply going to take over the target drive, as opposed to writing a backup *file*, which can then be restored elsewhere later? If Clonezilla can do that (just create a file), I really need to take a deeper look.
dandy72 wrote:
isn't Clonezilla simply going to take over the target drive,
Nope - not if you select Disk <==> Image, but it will produce a directory with multiple files that essentially contains a full dump of the disk in question. And, no worries, it does work for Windows. At least, it did for me.
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It seems, according to Dell's own tools, that my trusty Precision's ssd is on the way out and they are accordingly dispatching a replacement. Under normal circumstances I would usually take this as an opportunity to start afresh. I keep backups of all data so normally it's not the end of the world to lose a few hours, or days as the the case may be to rebuild the machine and get it back to the way I like it. Time is not on my side at present so I need to cheat, taking a full image of the existing disk in order to restore it to the replacement when it arrives next week. I've never tried this approach before and would be keen to know if others have and with what degree of success. Assuming that indeed it has been successful what would be their recommendation of a suitable product to carry this out. The ssd in question has a capacity of 500gb. I have a NAS available with enough room to accommodate a backup of this size, alternatively I could always access some cloud storage.
You can perform a bare metal/image backup with Veeam Backup for Windows. It's free for personal use. The limitation is you can only specify one type of backup. You will need to download the recovery image. You can create a bootable USB or just burn the ISO to disc that you will need for recovery.
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dandy72 wrote:
isn't Clonezilla simply going to take over the target drive,
Nope - not if you select Disk <==> Image, but it will produce a directory with multiple files that essentially contains a full dump of the disk in question. And, no worries, it does work for Windows. At least, it did for me.
Martijn Smitshoek wrote:
not if you select Disk <==> Image
Cool. I will definitely check out that option.
Martijn Smitshoek wrote:
And, no worries, it does work for Windows. At least, it did for me.
Indeed, if it works the way it "should", then a disk is a disk, and it shouldn't matter what file system is in use - and the operating system even less.
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It seems, according to Dell's own tools, that my trusty Precision's ssd is on the way out and they are accordingly dispatching a replacement. Under normal circumstances I would usually take this as an opportunity to start afresh. I keep backups of all data so normally it's not the end of the world to lose a few hours, or days as the the case may be to rebuild the machine and get it back to the way I like it. Time is not on my side at present so I need to cheat, taking a full image of the existing disk in order to restore it to the replacement when it arrives next week. I've never tried this approach before and would be keen to know if others have and with what degree of success. Assuming that indeed it has been successful what would be their recommendation of a suitable product to carry this out. The ssd in question has a capacity of 500gb. I have a NAS available with enough room to accommodate a backup of this size, alternatively I could always access some cloud storage.
Any of the packages that let you do a disk clone should work. I’ve done this several times swapping spinners with SSDs on old laptops. I’ve used Aomei, Macrium and EaseUs. All worked. Best if you can create a separate boot medium (thumb drive or such) so you’re not trying to clone the disk you’re booting from. Or use another machine and hook both drives up to it using USB enclosures.