Member Avatar for ggeoff

Hi

There is hardly a problem with adding a new hard drive to a desktop computer but how should one update the hard drive on which the operating system is installed? Hard drives fail, I have experienced only one over a period of twenty years and that was replaced under warranty! Even though it was not very old, of course. So protect your computer by replacing your hard drives. The problem is, how does one do that for the system drive? Most systems have OEM installed operating systems and have no discs -when bought used.

Geoff

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Member Avatar for adam_k

I'd suggest Norton Ghost or other similar software.
It shouldn't cause any problems and your system won't have a problem as long as it's the only component different.

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

It is a fact of life that at some point, something critical will fail.

I keep my OS on my C partition and my data (except for transient) on other partitions/drives. I do a clean install on C, set up my core apps and apply all updates. Then I take a complete image of the C partition with Acronis (Macrium Reflect is a decent and free alternative). When my system gets boggy after months of abuse I restore the last image, apply all updates, then make a new image. I do regular data backups of all other partitions/drives (redundant backups - two copies of everythng on identical external drives). I also keep a log file in which I record the dates and times of all system changes (installed/removed apps, etc).

Edited by Reverend Jim
Member Avatar for ellishgibbons

Hey, this is one of the way to Protecting computer from failures.
Test your backups by doing restoration of the data to a test system. Restoring backup data to a test system helps validate that your backups are working as expected. It should be done once a month. If you don't have a test system, practice restoring a few files to a temporary folder on your computer. The more comfortable you are with restoring files, the safer you will be.

Member Avatar for ggeoff

Thanks guys I'll look into the Macrium Reflect free edition. My setup is three hard drives. One is Windows and programs and the other two are in a RAID mirror.

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