Additional question - changing out C: drives

I'm purchasing three new hard drives.  Two ea. 12TB internals and a 12TB external.  I'm using to use Synctoy to copy all info to a second drive and then back-up to a third.

I was wondering about the back-up compressing the data?  Would it be compressed enough to use a 10TB drive for the back-up (just to save a little money) or should I quit trying to be a cheapskate and just buy a 12TB?

It depends on what you use to back them up. I prefer solutions that do not compress so that you can easily grab a file off of the backup without having to go through a decompression process which, in my experience, often fail. In that case you need as much storage as your data drive plus plenty more for future growth - this is why RAID and NAS backup is so popular - you can have huge backup spaces.

Backup programs that compress will vary depending on both the that that is being compressed and what algorithm they are using. A file that has a lot of sky taken at a low ISO will compress a lot more than a file that has lots of detail throughout the frame or one that has lots of noise which needs to be preserved, assuming the compression is lossless which backup programs always are.

Microsoft Synctoy just duplicates your files and folder structure and does not compress at all which is my preferred backup method.

I agree whole heartedly with the views presented by E.J.

If you use proprietary software and/or compression on a backup you take a risk of future issues.  I personally use a NAS box from Synology for my backups.  Based upon old habits I continue to use the Microsoft Windows 7 backup routine that is still provided and supported in Windows 10.  I also keep an "extra" image backup of the system SSD on a hard disk in the computer case.  Using RAID for the NAS box gives me data redundancy is a single disk fails.  

Good luck.

OK, that makes sense to me.  I'll just go with 2 ea. 12TB Internals and 1 ea. 12 TB external.

I apologize for my ignorance concerning the different types of drives, but somewhere I heard that Enterprise drives were good choice.  Because of that I was planning on getting two of these Seagate drives for the internals - Seagate Exos X14 12TB Internal Drives and one of this Western Digital externals - WD My Book 12 TB External Drive.  

In your opinion, are these decent drives?


In addition, I am also upgrading my C: Drive from 512MB SSD to a 2TB Crucial SSD.  Should I use SyncToy for this as well or should I use Back-Up software for that.  The sales guy at a local computer place said I should back-up my C: Drive because if it went bad and I had a back-up I would just have to restore it instead of having to download all new programs and then copy back all my data.  This is correct or was he just trying to sell me something?

To move your system from the current drive to the new, larger SSD you will have to make an image backup and then restore that image backup to the new larger SSD.  That is the only way to transfer the system, configuration and programs to another disk.  To accomplish this you will need a bootable USB thumb drive or DVD with the Windows Recovery/Media software on it.  You save the image, turn off the machine, remove the old system SSD and install the new SSD.  Then you boot on the recovery media and restore the image to the new SSD.  Indeed, it is good "insurance" to keep the old system SSD as a backup.  

The Seagate drives should be good, although I have always used either Western Digital Red/Red Pro or HGST drives.  I use a Western Digital My Book as an external backup drive for my laptop but the drives are generally not the highest line (I'm not sure what you should expect inside a current My Book).  

Thank you, Mark.

Question: Can't I accomplish the switch out of C: Drives by using Acronis to clone my system and associated files to my new drive and then swap them out? Wouldn't the new drive boot up then?

As Mark said, you can not use a backup program to create a new system drive, however you can clone the drive as you suggested.  A clone is just a different name for an image backup.   Once you make the clone and boot the system for the first time from the clone, you will first need to boot into the BIOS and select the new drive as the system drive.  Boot up sequence is specified in the BIOS, before a drive letter has been assigned by the operating system so you need to tell the system that this new drive is now your boot drive.

Thank you E.J.  This is a huge help.  One question, How do you boot into the BIOS?

EDIT:  NEVERMIND, I GOOGLED IT.  IF I HAVE A PROBLEM, I'LL HOLLER AGAIN.

THANKS AGAIN!

You may not like this answer, but "it depends".  You push a specific key, or key sequence as the initial boot takes place.  Many computers display the required key stroke(s) during the boot process, but many don't.  If your computer does not display the required key stroke look at the instructions for the motherboard/computer to find the answer.  In many cases it is a single function key, but it can also be something else.

I have the setup option in my BIOS to display, or not display the message with the key stroke; I choose to display it since I never remember it since it is used so infrequently.

Mark L wrote:You may not like this answer, but "it depends".  You push a specific key, or key sequence as the initial boot takes place.  Many computers display the required key stroke(s) during the boot process, but many don't.  If your computer does not display the required key stroke look at the instructions for the motherboard/computer to find the answer.  In many cases it is a single function key, but it can also be something else.

I have the setup option in my BIOS to display, or not display the message with the key stroke; I choose to display it since I never remember it since it is used so infrequently.

Thank you, Mark.  I hope it opens easily with just ESC or something.  Just in case, how does one find out what kind of motherboard they have, and are the instructions online or would they be something that came with the computer?

If you have a "name brand" computer (i.e. "Dell", "HP", etc.) go to the manufacturer website and search for the way to enter the BIOS.  If you configured the machine yourself, or with an assembler (i.e. "Puget Systems", or "AVA") check your invoice for the model and manufacturer of the motherboard.  You can also use the "System Information" function in Windows to tell you what the motherboard is.

Thank you, Mark.

When your computer first starts to boot, usually you get a boot up screen which is actually from the BIOS, it usually tells you what key to hit during the BIOS screen. It is often the Delete key but it can be something else. this takes you into a screen for all sorts of system configurations. Look for something labeled Boot on one of the screens - this is where you assign which drive to boot the system from permanently.

Just thought of one other thing - once you have the system booting to the new SSD.  When you cloned your 512GB SSD to your 1TB SSD, your 1TB SSD will have an image of that 512GB drive as a partition (C:) and the rest of the drive will be unallocated space.  What you will need to do next is to go into Computer Management and then select Disk management and find that unallocated partition - it will be obvious - you will have one drive where roughly half of it will say unassigned or unallocated or similar and there will be a large section of that drive labeled as C:.  You will then need to right click on the C: partition and select Extend Volume (or similar).  Here is an article on that:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... sic-volume

Excellent. Thanks so much, E.J.

I just ordered all the drives this morning, so I will have several days to become better educated.

OK, all of the drives and parts are in and ready to go.  I put off upgrading everything until I finished remodeling my office, but I've read and re-read the previous posts here and I've watched several YouTube videos on changing out C: drives BUT, I still have a couple of very elementary questions.  Those who know me realize I'm not tech savvy at all, so please play along and answer in simple terms I can understand.

I'm upgrading and changing the C: drives on both my laptop and desktop, but the procedures should be the same I suspect.  Please correct me if I am wrong.

1st, I plan to clone my current C: drives using Acronis 2020, and to do so via USB 3.0 on the desktop and USB 3.1 on the laptop.  Any problems doing this so far?

2nd, and here is where I'm unclear.  I think this is so elementary that you (and the YouTube videos) probably think even an idiot understands what you were saying but, alas, I'm a bigger idiot than you imagined.  So, after I have the new drives cloned and ready to go, do I remove the old C: drive and replace it with the NEW C: drive before booting the computer and going into the BIOS? I know, very simple question; so simple no one here or in the videos covered it.

I have one more silly question:  When I clone my current C: drive to the new one, do I name the NEW cloned drive C: or another letter (say Q), and when I replace and go into the BIOS, do I tell the BIOS to boot C: drive or Q: drive?

That's the only thing holding me up currently.

After I have the answer to these questions, I will:
1. Clone and replace drives.
2. Boot into BIOS and select new boot drive.
3. Reboot computer and go into Disk Management and extend the volume to take advantage of the new size.

Dies this sound correct?

As always, thanks for your help and for sharing your knowledge.

1. OK
2. Yes - put the new drive where the old one was. Naming is irelevant, the BIOS selects which drive to boot up on and defaults that drive to C: A clone will name the drive automatically with exactly the same name as the original - it's a clone

You have the right procedure.

E.J. Peiker wrote:1. OK
2. Yes - put the new drive where the old one was.  Naming is irelevant, the BIOS selects which drive to boot up on and defaults that drive to C:  A clone will name the drive automatically with exactly the same name as the original - it's a clone

You have the right procedure.

Excellent!  Thank you, E.J.

Hmmm.  Houston, we have a problem.

Ok, I cloned C: drive, opened up my laptop, switched the drives out, turned on computer, opened up the BIOS, went to the Boot option.  It had 5 Boot Options.  The Boot page looks like this:

Boot Configuration
Bootup NumLock State - [On]
Fast Boot - [Enabled]
Boot Mode Select - [UEFI]

Fixed Boot Order Priorities
Boot Option #1 - [CD/DVD]
Boot Option #2 - [USB CD/DVD]
Boot Option #3 - [Hard Disk: Windows Boot Manager]
Boot Option #4 - [USB Hard Disk]
Boot Option #5 - [Network]

>UEFI Hard Disc Drive BBS Priorities


I selected Option #1, hit enter, then selected [Hard Disk: Windows Boot Manager], hit enter, then went up to "Save & Exit", hit enter, a new screen came up, I chose Save Changes & Reset, hit enter.  The machine did it's thing for 20 seconds or so, then a blue screen appears with options.  I chose Exit & Enter Windows 10.  The machine did it's thing again, then the blue screen came up again with the same options.  I chose the same option once again, hit enter, and ditto, same thing.

The options on the blue screen were - Exit & continue to Windows 10, Use a device, Troubleshoot, and Turn off your PC.

I also tried "Use a device". A screen came up that said "Windows Boot Manager".  I chose that and the same thing happened after 10 seconds or so, the original blue screen comes back up.

Any ideas?

In every BIOS I've ever seen, it specifies the drive options to boot from with the model number of the drive and then select that. you may have to fish around in other parts of the BIOS to see if it is recognizing the new drive - if not, you may ahve an installation problem of some kind and the system isn't recognizing the drive - check all cable connections.