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Home  > Disk Actions  > Copy a Disk to a Disk

Copy a Disk to a Disk


Attention: All previous data on the destination disk will be completely deleted

To copy an entire disk or its part to another one:

1 Click Copy Disk on the Action Selection panel.

R-Drive Image will start analyzing the computer disk configuration, the Progress... message showing the progress. Then the Object Selection panel will show the configuration.

Click to expand/collapse More information...

Disk Configuration

You may select all objects on a hard drive by clicking the hard drive icon .. It will show the marked hard drive .

2 Select the disk object on the Source: on the Object Selection panel, select a destination, and click the Next button

Click the controls to learn their functions or go to the respective help pages

You may select only one object at a time, and you need to specify the destination to proceed further.

Use the Refresh button if your computer disk configuration has been changed (when you connect a USB disk, for example).

Click to expand/collapse More information...

If the destination is smaller than the selected object, R-Drive Image won't allow you to select this object and you will need to select another destination.

If you select several partitions as the destination, R-Drive Image will show the You have selected several partitions... message. If you click the OK button, all those partitions will be deleted and data will be restored on that free space .

Note: Although R-Drive Image shows unallocated space instead of the deleted partitions, the partitions and their data will be actually deleted only when R-Drive Image starts copying the data.

Selected Object and Destination

Click to expand/collapse S.M.A.R.T. warning for a hard drive

If a hard drive has S.M.A.R.T. warnings, a color mark will appear on its left-top corner. Dragging the cursor over the drive will show a tooltip explaining that warning.

Warnings will also appear in confirming e-mails for scheduled actions .

* ===================[S.M.A.R.T.]===================

! SAMSUNG HM320HJ 2AK10001(298GB #2): Health Status: BAD

  [01] Read Error Rate

! ===================[S.M.A.R.T.]===================

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) is a technology widely-used in hard drives and solid-state devices that monitors their reliability conditions to predict possible hardware failures.

If you try to copy data to or from a system, or other disk locked by the system or other application, the Disk not locked message will appear.

Click to expand/collapse To continue copying you may:

• If you copy data to or from your system disk , select Restart computer (recommended) to continue restoring the data in the R-Drive Image startup mode. Read carefully the Disk to Disk Copy Using the Startup Disks topic before you proceed.

• If you copy data to a disk locked by other low-level disk software (including Windows internal services) , stop this software and select Retry to lock the disk once again.

• You may also try to unlock the disk by selecting Force Windows to unlock the disk (not recommended) . If Windows fails to unlock the disk, the Disk not locked message will appear again. You will need to stop the software locking the disk manually or select Restart computer (recommended) to continue copying the data in the R-Drive Image startup mode.

Note: Use this option cautiously, because it may cause unpredictable results including system crash and data loss.

You may select all objects on a hard drive by clicking the hard drive icon .. It will show the marked hard drive .

3 Specify copy parameters on the Restore/Copy Parameters panel and click the Next button

Click to expand/collapse Restore parameters

You may change create/copy/modify parameters on the Create partition , Copy partition , or Modify partition panel. Click the Create / Copy Options / Modify button, respectively.

Click to expand/collapse Create/Copy Partition Parameters

Partition ing scheme

The type of partition ing scheme . See Support for Various Disk Partition Schemes and File Systems for the list of supported partition types.

Partition type

Primary (Active)/ Primary/Logical You may specify the type of the partition to be restored. Do not change this setting unless you have serious reasons to do so.

File system

You may select the file system for the partition to be restored.

Allocation unit size

It is the size of a disk block, that is, the minimum allocatable disk space. (only on the Create partition panel.)

Volume label

Label of this volume. You can change it.

Drive letter

Select the letter that will be assigned to the partition. You may select "Do not connect" if you do not want to connect this partition to your system. Or "Do not modify" it you do not want to change the drive letter.

Partition size

Minimum/maximum size of the partition to be restored.

Free space before

You may specify the size of free space that will be left on the hard drive before the beginning of the partition.

Partition size

You may specify the size of the partition to be restored. Should be between the minimum and maximum partition size.

Free space after

You may specify the size of free space that will be left on the hard drive after the end of the partition.

You may visually adjust the location and size of the object to be restored. All other restore options will be adjusted accordingly. Also, when you adjust one or several restore options directly, these changes will be shown visually. Green marks available space. See Support for Various Disk Partition Schemes and File Systems for the list of supported file systems.

The Restore/Copy Parameters panel will be different with different sets of options:

HDD Copy Method

Raw disk copy

R-Drive Image writes sector-by-sector the data from the original drive or its image to the target one making an exact copy of the original disk regardless of its partitioning method. Can be used if other methods create a non-bootable disk due to incorrect  detection of drive's geometry or non-standard loader.

Drawback: partition sizes cannot be changed.

Copy all partitions onto original places

R-Drive Image copies all partitions to their original places. If R-Drive Image detects the drive's geometry correctly, and there is no non-standard loader, it makes the same result as during Raw disk copy .

Realign partitions

R-Drive Image will copy the partitions on the disk with a 512KB alignment. This is very useful for SSD and advanced- formatted disks. If there are empty (non-used) spaces between partitions, those spaces will be removed taking into account the alignment.

Expand/Shrink partition to whole disk

If there are empty (not-used) places between the partitions or they occupy less or more space than the target drive, R-Drive Image proportionally expands/shrinks them to occupy the entire target drive. Otherwise it is similar to Copy all partitions onto original places .

Fixed active partition

R-Drive Image preserves the original offset/size of the active partition (in case the loader has links to it).

See Support for Various Disk Partition Schemes and File Systems for details.

When you copy a system disk, a disk signature collision may occur. In this case, the Copy options panel will inform you about this. You may specify the way to resolve this collision on the Disk Signature Collision panel.

Disk Signature Collision Resolving

Same signature for both disk

R-Drive Image will create an identical copy of the source disk with the same signature. To avoid disk signature collision , you'll have to disconnect one of the disks and restart the computer, if necessary. Use this mode if you clone a system disk for another computer or only the target disk will be used in yours.

Different signature on the target disk.

R-Drive Image will write another disk signature to the target disk. Don’t use this mode if you clone a system disk, Windows won’t start from it. To get access to the target disk after cloning, you’ll have to restart the computer or re-connect it if it’s an external USB disk.

Change the disk signature on the source disk.

R-Drive Image will change the disk signature on the source disk. Use this mode if you want to start Windows from the target disk, but be warned: the computer won’t start from the source disk anymore.

4 Verify that the information on the Processing panel is correct and click the Start button

You may also create a script for this action. Click the Script to Clipboard button and paste the script to any text-processing utility

> R -Drive Image will start copying the data from the source to the selected destination place.

When the data is copied, the Object copied successfully message will appear.

If some other program (like a file manager) is accessing the partition on which the data is to be restored, the Cannot lock the disk message will appear. Close this program or make it stop accessing the partition.

If you copy an entire hard drive to another hard drive, two absolutely identical hard drive will appear in your system. That will confuse it and may cause unpredictable results. To prevent that, a Disk copied successfully message will appear. You may turn your system off to disconnect one of the disks, or restart it to disable one of the disk in the BIOS of your system. Under Windows 95/98/Millennium, the target disk will not appear until system restart even if you decide to click the Cancel button.

Click to expand/collapse Bad Sectors

When R-Drive Image encounters a bad sector, the IO Error message will appear. You may either cancel the current action or fill the bad sectors with zeros.

IO Error Options

Abort

Click this button to cancel the action

Retry

Click this button to try to read the bad sectors once again

Ignore

Click this button to skip this error and fill the bad sectors with zeros

Ignore All

Click this button to skip all errors and fill the bad sectors with zeros

 

The Disk Actions chapter explains basic disk actions.

The Startup Version chapter explains how to perform disk actions using the R-Drive Image Startup Version .

The Technical Information chapter gives technical information on Supported CD and DVD Recorders and List of Hardware Devices Supported in the Startup Mode and another useful technical information.

Follow this link to obtain R-Drive Image Contact Information and Technical Support

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