Cloning tips?

[speedlever]

I have an old Asus Z71A laptop that, believe it or not, runs Win 8.1 pro x86. It's a bit slow and lacks a video driver for the chipset, but the generic driver is usable.

I would like to close the existing 80GB drive to a spare 160 GB drive I have and then extend the partition so I can have the extra space.

Would you recommend Clonezilla or Trinity Rescue Kit or something else? (I've never cloned a drive before).

Thanks for any tips or suggestions!

 

[Mark Phelps]

I recommend Macrium Reflect. I've used it numerous times to clone drives and it has the feature of allowing you to change the size of the target to fill the entire drive.

 

[speedlever]

Thanks Mark. Does the free version do what I need it to do?

 

[whs]

Yes, free Macrium does clone very well. You can also use the free AOMEI Backupper.

Best Free Backup Software for Windows 10, Windows 8.1/8, Windows 7, Vista, XP

 

[RolandJS]

Agroanis is pretty good, once you understand the menu system.

 

[whs]

Agroanis is pretty good, once you understand the menu system.

If you mean Acronis, that's a handsome frog. Recently many people walked away from it in disgust. I had used it a long time ago and found it to be unnecessarily complicated.

 

[RolandJS]

Agroanis is pretty good, once you understand the menu system.

If you mean Acronis, that's a handsome frog. Recently many people walked away from it in disgust. I had used it a long time ago and found it to be unnecessarily complicated.

Yes, it is a bit more complicated and less intuitive than it needs to be; even though I finally got used to it. It WORKS, but so does midwifing a carp for caviar.

 

[Dude]

Yes, free Macrium does clone very well. You can also use the free AOMEI Backupper.

Best Free Backup Software for Windows 10, Windows 8.1/8, Windows 7, Vista, XP

AOMEI is very reliable and easy to use

 

[speedlever]

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't do this often enough to have to learn a complex app.

Edit: After reading a little over on Gizmo's site (best freeware), I came across some info on AOMEI which indicates it is crippleware requiring a post on social media to unlock it. That kills it for me right there.

Looks like Macrium Reflect by default.

 

[Clintlgm]

Agroanis is pretty good, once you understand the menu system.

I used it for several years, and since 2011 Acronis said they were UEFI compliant, Well that was not so in 2011, 2012, 2013 and early 2014 may or june they had an updated that user reported actually restored a booting GPT OS disk. Up until 2011 I never had a failure with ATH, I even updated to ATH 2015 4 units. The first time I needed it my Images were no where to be found!! All my computers are now using Macrium Reflect Pro