If you’re using an OEM drive that didn’t come with a cloning utility, you can buy Acronis True Image as a stand-alone download for $30.
The Acronis True Image software that comes with Western Digital drives works in basically the same way. When the process is finished, shut down the PC and swap the new drive–complete with all your old data exactly as it was–in for the old one. Run DiscWizard, and copy your entire disc image to the new drive (this is known as “cloning”). With Seagate’s DiscWizard, you install the software on your existing hard drive before you take it out of your PC, and connect the new drive to your PC’s USB port with an external enclosure or a USB to SATA/IDE adapter (the cheaper, faster option). You could use it to push all the data onto an external disk and then pull it onto the new disk, but then you would be transferring all the data twice.Īn adapter like this one lets you quickly connect and disconnect a hard drive to your USB port without screwing anything in.Fortunately, a better solution comes included with drives from major vendors like Seagate and Western Digital. But Easy Transfer isn’t very good for transferring data from your old hard drive to a new one, because it requires you to log in and configure the transfer from one drive to another. That extra time really matters, since you can’t use your computer while the transfer is under way.įor transferring data to a new PC, Microsoft built a utility called Easy Transfer into Windows 7 and Vista. Transferring the data from your old hard drive to a new, higher-capacity drive can take hours and hours under ideal circumstances, and choosing the wrong method can turn this into a day-long chore. What I didn’t talk about was one of the most significant time wasters in the whole process: data transfer. In the earlier article, I explained a few of the simple mistakes people often make when they upgrade their hard drive. In this piece, I’ll take a look at several of the most commonly overlooked details for such tasks as transferring data to a new hard drive, installing a new graphics card, updating your PC’s BIOS and the firmware for your other devices, setting up a Wi-Fi network, and keeping Windows Genuine Advantage from botching an otherwise good upgrade. Since so many PCWorld readers - including a lot of seasoned upgrade veterans - liked that collection of tips, I thought I’d follow it up with some tips that I couldn’t fit into the first article. Last month, in “ 5 PC Upgrades Almost Everyone Does Wrong,” I explored some common upgrade mistakes. For more experienced tinkerers, the upgrade itself may be easy, but it’s easier still to overlook factors that could streamline the whole process and better protect both the hardware and the data stored on it. For the novice, a hard drive upgrade can appear downright daunting. As PCs get more powerful and easier to use, the challenges involved with upgrading them have remained about the same.
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