25 replies to this topic

[junkerde]

How does one go about replicating the entire contents of a hard drive to another, so that the other hard drive becomes the bootable disk? Right now, the wd black is on a shell shocker deal at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533

Cheap as it will get so I got one, I want to replicate what I have on my seagate hardrive now and make the copy on the WD black, do I have to mess with the bios boot options? Also will putting a hard drive on below another hard drive in a hard drive bay in a computer case cause heat problems? I only have one space left for the WD black right below my seagate, and there is a fan directly blow to those hard drives from the front.

Edited by junkerde, 09 November 2012 - 12:39 PM.

[wevsspot]

Hey Junk. Welcome to the OCC forums. Lucky for you that you've chosen a WD replacement drive
That makes the whole process painless.

Buy your new WD hard drive and connect it to one of the spare controllers on your motherboard, hook up power. Use the Windows disk management utility to format the drive, but don't bother giving it a Drive letter.
Go to Western Digital's Support Site and download a copy of WD Acronis True Image;
http://support.wdc.c...il.asp?swid=119

Install Acronis, open the application, follow the directions and boom..... you're done.

Even if you had to pay for Acronis it's still an awesome utility, but why pay when you can get it for free?

[junkerde]

awww yeah! sweet! so convenient! thanks for the information!

[junkerde]

well........acronis really effed up my night. got my wd black, cloned. and now a bunch of problems............super slow startuptimes and it didnt even clone my drive! the wd is empty, then a corrupt recycle bin....man wtf did i get myself into. NEVER doing this acronis crap AGAIN!

edit: found out the wd couldnt write because of bad sectors. this drive was BAD from the start, what a way for a first impression with a wd device. rma time, what a failure!

Edited by junkerde, 13 November 2012 - 05:20 PM.

[bigball1]

Acronis is one of the best cloning programs out there.

How did you find out the new drive has bad sectors. Did you run the WD diag unility?

[wevsspot]

The way things are going with hard drives these days, the first thing I do is run a diagnostic check on the drive whenever possible. Before I put any other work into it. Sorry about the problem - but as BB said, Acronis is pretty awesome when everything else is working as it should be.

[junkerde]

Well I knew there was something wrong when windows would take forever to booth with the WD black plugged in. Upon restart, the S.M.A.R.T feature on the bios detected the drive as bad and failing, and it was right. The drive would appear and dissapear when booted up. After about 2 reboots the drive just totally stopped working with the smart error, I had to take out the WD Black drive. But from what I heard this particular model had problems and I probably got a bad batch from newegg, which is why im not gonna ask for a replacement, I might end up with the same defective batch. I wont find a deal like this again, but for reliability I'm going to buy a seagate barracuda 7200 (which I have in my system right now, has never broken down).

[Waco]

Make sure you try a new cable and port before declaring it dead. It's highly unlikely you'd get a second bad drive from Newegg and even if you did they will keep swapping for you till it works.

[SpikeSoprano]

I would never replace a WD with Seagate, but I guress that's just me.

[junkerde]

Make sure you try a new cable and port before declaring it dead. It's highly unlikely you'd get a second bad drive from Newegg and even if you did they will keep swapping for you till it works.

Of course, I have. I have a second hdd in my system and the WD was going to be my third, I used the cable and port from that hdd to test with my WD Black also, then used the same cable and ports on my secondary hdd. My ports were not faulty, the WD was faulty.

[junkerde]

I would never replace a WD with Seagate, but I guress that's just me.

It's not really replacing, as the WD didn't even work from the start. I guess im just in shock from this experience and my seagate has never failed me, so the only good theoretical thing to do is get a seagate for $80, whereas there is no more deal on the WD black that is selling for $110 at the least....I mean unless I have to "wait it out" for this defective batch to be gone.....idk what it is.

Edited by junkerde, 18 November 2012 - 04:56 PM.

[bigball1]

I would never replace a WD with Seagate, but I guress that's just me.

And me

Talk about down grading