I think I could stumble through this on my own with a little help from Google, but there is a complication I would like to add.

My 2TB data drive with my audio books (98% filled!) is dying. When I reboot, Windows frequently tells me it is checking and repairing Drive F:, and the last time I did a backup to a USB external 2TB drive I got errors and eventual failure of the backup.

I have a brand new Western Digital 3TB drive to replace it. It is now installed in my computer, and Disk Management sees the drive and wants me to initialize it. But now the complication...

Since I have a bunch of space on that drive that I will likely never need, I thought that maybe I should use some of that space to clone my C: system drive, particularly since my Macrium cloning software tells me that yes, I can (and have done so) clone to an external USB drive, but Windows won't boot from a USB drive, I would have to install that drive in place of my current C: drive in order to boot the computer from the clone.

So, it would work out nicely if I could make part of the new 3TB F: drive my destination for the C: clone.

How do I do that? Can I initialize the new 3TB F: drive as a "New Simple Volume" and create a directory on that new F: drive as the destination to store my C: Clone? If so, would it be bootable? Or do I need to partition the new 3TB drive into an F: drive, and a bootable G: drive that would hold my C: Clone?

If the latter, is it something I might be smart enough to figure out how to do, or will I need step-by-step directions from someone who knows what they are doing? [hint, hint...] Are there any traps to avoid?

Thank you in advance for any help that anyone can offer.

tanstaafl.

I cannot help much with MS-Win, but I do know that you CAN install/boot MS-Windows (most versions) on an external USB drive, using (free) WinToUSB software to do the install.

So, one way to accomplish that here, would be to first partition the new 3TB drive with enough space for your new "C:" system drive, and then use WinToUSB to install MS-Windows onto it. Then copy/reinstall anything else you want, and create any extra partitions for data etc..

Hopelessly complicated perhaps, but it does work.
Others here, who actually use MS-Windows, will probably have better suggestions!

I like Macrium Reflect.

Wow, I'm sorry, I was tired when I responded, and on my phone, and completely misunderstood what you were asking. I thought you were just trying to migrate your system drive to a new disk.

Mark's recommendation should work...

Frame challenge time. Why? What failure mode are you hoping to protect against?

If I were you I'd simply periodically snapshot the C: drive (using Windows' built-in facilities) to an external drive (or even sufficiently-large USB device) that I then kept safe somewhere.

Just use the extra space as extra space. Don't get complicated.



It absolutely will, given a sufficiently new PC, and sufficiently new Windows, but that's not what I'm suggesting. It will also boot from the recovery media that I'm suggesting you create instead.

I am protecting against a sudden failure of my SSD system drive. From what I understand, when they fail, it is frequently catastrophic with no warning, and I want to avoid the trauma of a new Windows install and reinstallation of all my software. It's been a year since the last time that happened to me, and I still occasionally find some piece of software that doesn't run because it hasn't been reinstalled. FWIW, I keep on one of my data drives all of the downloaded software installation files, each in its own directory, complete with authorization codes, etc. So when I find a program that needs to be reinstalled, it is a matter of two or three minutes to get it up and running. But I have a lot of those files!

I think I'm making it a bit less complicated, for my usage at least. I put about 150 GB of the new 3TB drive into a separate partition that I will use to keep my system clone. That partition will always be on-line, I won't have to swap disks around in my external docks, data transfer will be faster than a USB external drive, I will always be able to boot from it if necessary, and I will keep another copy of that clone drive in my fire safe along with the copies of the rest of the system.

I don't foresee any other use for that 150GB. Going from 2TB to 3TB on my failed F: drive, even with the 150 GB taken away by the clone partition, I am still increasing my available space by more than my backup disk for the F: drive has room for, and the data on the F: drive, while not static, does not increase. It gets moved around, but not added to.

My recovery from the backup disk to the F: drive has been running for 17 hours, and judging by the file names it is currently writing, is about 75% finished now. Average file size is a bit over 500MB, and there are 3,879 of them.

I'll breathe a little easier when that backup is finished, even though I do keep a backup of the backup in the fire safe.

tanstaafl.

If what you are describing is possible with Windows now then I'd definitely go for it.

This ability was one of the key things that pushed me over to the Mac years ago. There is a great deal of comfort when you know that:

- it is dead easy to clone the whole system boot drive, while the system is running (on the Mac using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner)
- within seconds of the system drive failing I can be booted on an exact copy of the system drive that "just works*"

In my case I don't mess about with partitions on internal drives for this, it goes onto a dedicated external drive. Not only can I boot my normal MacBook from it, I could plug the same drive into any vaguely modern Mac and boot from it into my normal setup.

I also use it when doing OS upgrades. I make sure I've cloned before hand and don't update the clone for a few days afterwards (sometimes I'll make a second clone on another drive, doing so is painless).

So yes, I recommend it, it gives great peace of mind.

Does Windows cope with drive letters etc when you suddenly boot from an image of the boot drive on another drive ?

* the only thing I've ever seen that has an issue when you boot from a clone of a Mac drive is DropBox, you have to reconnect DropBox when you've booted from a clone

I think that on power-up I can hit the "del" key and get into BIOS, where I change the boot drive letter to the clone drive letter, then continue normal boot-up.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong about this.

tanstaafl.

I know about BIOSes and selecting the boot drive, I have plenty of PCs (both virtual and physical).

What I'm not sure on is whether when you do that to a Window machine whether all your other drives appear on the drive letters you (and your software) expects ? Modern partitioning schemes have unique ids for drives/partitions to allow stuff like this to work ok in theory, but I don't know how Windows handles it (and if it does, whether it requires you to have used the newer partitioning schemes).

Definitely at some point in the past it didn't handle it well, I remember drives shifting letters when things went wrong in machines with a few drives/partitions.

The boot drive seems to always be seen as "C:" as near as I can tell. So when booting from USB, with a different drive internal, the USB drive becomes "C:".

But I'm no expert on MS-anything.

Linux and Mac have no problems with exact cloning of system images/drives. Fuss with those seems to be only a Microsoft obsession.

Many people I know just boot Linux from a USB stick periodically, and from there do a very simple bit-copy of their MS-Win drive to a backup device. Eg. "cat /dev/sda > /dev/sdb".

Then, should the carefully curated main MS-Win drive ever fail, a replacement of equal or greater size is acquired, and the bit copy is then done in reverse to regain an exact setup to before.