Hard Disk Clone – Copy Data from Corrupted Hard Drive
How to Clone a Hard Drive and Recover Data?
Copying the totality of one particular hard disk drive to another is termed as cloning. This is, in fact, a significant procedure in case you wish to replace your original hard disk or want to upgrade the primary HDD of your system. Cloning is not the same thing as backing up, though it may sound so! When any hard drive is cloned, then you get a perfect copy of nearly everything which was there on the drive – OS, the software applications and all of the data and files included therein. Whenever you try to clone hard disk drive, you tend to recreate its whole environment, along with partition and everything else.
Why Hard Drive Clone?
At times, you clone a drive because your present hard disk drive is somehow failing. Also, at times, you clone a hard drive because you might wish to upgrade it to a higher drive. And at some other times, you might just wish to ensure that you are having a complete backup of your entire work environment to avoid the loss in case something goes terribly wrong.
2 Options: Either Clone or Image
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Clone: The first one i.e. the clone is the direct copy, bit by bit of the original drive, for making sure that the data on that cloned hard drive is same as that on the original one. Right from your OS to all your hidden directory files, and from your desktop data to your device drivers, every single thing would be copied in an identical manner. Even if you swap the old one with its newly formed clone, there would be no such functional difference. This hard drive clone can be used on any other machine. Besides any potential missing drivers may be owing to some of the hardware differences, the clone works same like the old system, thus making this an ideal backup in cases of destroyed PC.
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Image: The option is of creating a disk image. This is actually a snapshot of your original drive data; though this would still create a whole copy of those drive contents. However, this is done in one single compressed file. It is like copying the whole drive to a large .zip file. Here, you can really back up multiple images, thus allowing you to save the complete drive more than one times and at different points in time. You can even save these locally (to some backup partition) or may be onto some separate drive.
Hard Drive Cloning Process
- For executing the hard disk clone procedure, the first and foremost thing to be done for cloning from one drive to another internal one, is to switch the power of computer off in the very first place.
- Remove cables from the system
- Then, dislodge the top as well as the bottom case
- Connect the original drive to the new drive using cables
- Now, do the repositioning of the covers
- Then, turn on the machine
- Now, allow the OS to carry out the process of loading
- Open cloning tool
- Choose cloning option
- Select the first drive location that needs the cloning along with the location of the new drive where you wish to position the clone
- Run the process
The job is done and all your data is preserved. The process would become much simpler if you choose an external HDD for storing your cloned data.
Recovering Data from a Clone!
After cloning corrupt hard drive data to a disk image on one of the other drives, when you try opening that disk image file, sometimes, in some cases, it does not open. Most of you then try starting the scan where that disk image had been stored.
Reasons for Non-Recovery after Cloning
Sometimes, scanning the entire drive does not work. You can try a deep can in that case. Still, if you do not get results, then try contacting a commercial operator for the purpose of recovering data after the process of hard drive clone.
Data Recovery Service
The Data Recovery service can help you a great deal in such circumstances. It is a good-to-try service!
