Hi, Im replacing my C: drive, as the title already states, can I use Rclone to clone my boot drive to another local hard drive, and if so what would the appropriate commands be?
Im running Windows 10 Pro OEM
hello again,
no you cannot use rclone to clone your boot drive.
rclone copies files, not operating systems.
you can search the internet and find info such as
i have cloned many dozens of windows computers over the years.
read the above weblinks and ask me a question, i will try to help
Aha, thats sad
Crucial (The manufacturer of my SSD) provides a software for this, however Im a little concerned they might include spyware when cloning the drive. Can you recommend a software to use instead?
the software the crucial provides is acronis correct?
if so, as part of my consulting, i clone hard drive all the time.
i actually pay acronis for the commercial version of the software.
not only can acronis software clone hard drives between the same computer.
acronis can copy your boot drive to a new computer with different hardware.
and it can do a lot of other stuff beyond just cloning.
i think that this is the software and manual for acronis for crucial
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/promotion/CrucialHD-download/
i have used acronis for over 10 years now, it is very powerful and most trustworthy.
Oh okay, yeah its Acronis that they use in there tutorials 
I will give it a go then.
Since you got some experience with hard drives and so, do you know if I can just install my new drive on any SATA 6.0GB/s port on my motherboard and then make it my primary boot drive from the BIOS? Because Crucial recommends unplugging the current boot drive's SATA cable from the motherboard to connect the new drive to that port to make it the default boot drive that way, but I rather not open up my chassi twice if I dont have to 
Also brb, I will go eat dinner
well, it should not matter what sata port a hard drive is plugged into and there should be no need to do anything inside the bios.
however, i am a paranoid person and you should be to.
this is your first time cloning, i suggest that you follow the instructions.
not sure why you would need to open the chassis twice,
just leave the chassis open while you clone and then close it after the cloning is done.
good luck
Following this guide they encourage you to use a SATA to usb cable when cloning the drive (Which I dont have, and is why I would open the chassi twice), and then they want you to replace the new drive (Which in my case isn't exactly what I want).
Should I just try to find another guide?
this is getting too off-topic for rlcone forum and i do not want to be responsible if you make a mistake.
again, i do not understand why you would need to open and close the chasis twice, just leave it open at the start and leave it open until you are done cloning. and what is the big deal anyway about opening and closing the chasis.
IMHO, if you do not understand that then you should not be cloning on your own.
if it were me, i would plug in both hard drives into the computer's sata ports and clone that way, no usb needed.
in any event, perhaps you should reach out to a local computer repair store in town and have them clone for you.
good luck!
... or at least continue the thread in the acronis forum:
https://forum.acronis.com/
Because this is obviously not related to rclone at this point (the wrong tool for the job at hand).
Acronis a well known, serious software company that Crucial just licenses from so I wouldn't have any security concerns over using it. Not that there aren't plenty of good alternatives - but if you already have Acronis then no need to look elsewhere IMO.
You don't need to be paranoid about working inside the chassis. As long as you power down before you work on it and you don't use metal tools you'd have to try pretty hard to cause damage to it.
I would however advice you to liberally use your cellphone to take pictures of how things looked and where things were connected - so you have something to reference back to if you ever get confused about the cabling.
Good luck
Its actually a home built PC and the drives are super accessable, so all I will have to do is plug in the right cables and mount the drive in a 2.5 inch drive bay, what Im unsure of is just if I can plug in the drive into a SATA port which is not the default OS drive port, because I know my motherboards BIOS have a feature called Boot Priority where you can choose which drives you want your pc to attempt booting from first.
The reason to that I ask is just to be extra careful, so that I don't have to reroute a drive that I know works as it sits right now
Thanks for the link btw 
To the best of knowledge it should matter very little if at all what ports you use to connect the new drive to do the cloning in. It just needs access to both drives at the same time.
Which drive is then used to boot from later on is something can select in that boot priority in BIOS you mentioned. This is not fixed to the physical connector and you can change it at will easily.
The only important thing I would actually pay attention to is which ports on the motherboard are what standard (often color coded). Depending on the age of the motherboard it is quite common to have a couple of high-performance ports using the latest standard and then maybe several more cheaper ones maybe a generation behind. Older boards may have S-ATA 3GB/s as well as S-ATA 6GB/s interfaces and you wouldn't want to connect a new SSD to the older port. On a newer board it's likely all S-ATA3 - unless it's so new that you are talking about M.2 card-slots (in which case there are S-ATA and NVME variants of these).
You'd have to give me specifics on what motherboard model you have and what drive-model you bought for me to give you exact advice in this regards (I can look up the details in the manual for you). I am a bit of a hardware nerd so this stuff is very familiar to me.
I don't really mind helping you with non-rclone stuff even if it off-topic, but as asdffdsa said - it's all at your own risk (even if I wouldn't say there is much risk). I will gladly provide guidance to the best of my ability, but if something should go wrong don't get mad at me
"Which drive is then used to boot from later on is something can select in that boot priority in BIOS you mentioned. This is not fixed to the physical connector and you can change it at will easily."
Yeah this is what I was asking about, then I will just connect my new drive to a SATA 6.0gb/s
"Older boards may have S-ATA 3GB/s as well as S-ATA 6GB/s interfaces and you wouldn't want to connect a new SSD to the older port. On a newer board it's likely all S-ATA3 - unless it's so new that you are talking about M.2 card-slots (in which case there are S-ATA and NVME variants of these).
You'd have to give me specifics on what motherboard model you have and what drive-model you bought for me to give you exact advice in this regards (I can look up the details in the manual for you). I am a bit of a hardware nerd so this stuff is very familiar to me."
Its a Z170-A, it happens to have M.2 as well I believe. If you have this as a hobby I wouldn't mind if you found the right page on the manual for me lol, but I would happily just do it myself otherwise
"but as asdffdsa said - it's all at your own risk"
Mhm I get the idea, I have some anti static gloves and a ESD wrist strap (And a ESD matt as well, but Im guessing that it wont be too useful when installing drives).
EDIT: The drive is the Crucial MX500, its recommended to be installed on a 6.0gb/s port I believe and ofc if something goes wrong its entirely on me
"hobby" pffsh... what sort of amateur do you take me for?
section 1-24 in your PDF reader (top left)
You have:
4x S-ATA 6Gb/sec
2x S-ATA Express (theoretically up to 16Gb/sec)
The MX500 you have will be fine on a 6Gb/sec interface, but considering the S-ATA express ports are technically superior in all ways and are on an Intel chipset (which is considered premium quality tier) that's where I'd install the drive in the end. Doesn't really matter which port is used while cloning though.
Realistically I doubt you will see much difference between the ports as the MX500 is designed around 6Gbit/sec. it might give you a couple of percentage points more in certain burst tasks, but that's about the extent of it.
See the diagram for where these ports are physically located. It won't really matter one way or another which of the 2 S-ATA Express ports you use, or which of the 4 S-ATA 6Gb/sec you use. The "1" is technically the "primary" one it will check first but it has few if any practical implications.
If you have an ESD, connect it to some steel on the chassis and worry no more. Realistically it's more than enough to just not work on hardware on your friggin carpet and to touch the chassis before handling sensitive components. I rarely use ESD outside of professional settings (and haven't damaged anything in the last 20 years or so) - but if you have an ESD bracelet then by all means do it the proper way and worry less
As I said, no reason to freak on this. Just handle any old mechanical harddrives with some care and don't give them any serious hard impacts. SSD's don't really care as long as you don't hit them with a hammer.
The chassis is mostly just there to be a protective shell against physical damage and accidents and to have somewhere to screw things in conveniently. I don't even run a chassis on my primary computer currently - it ain't anything magic
Just to point this out, that's pretty magic
In the manual, page 14-15, how do I tell which are S-ATA Express and which are SATA 6.0? Also on page 15 it says I have SATA6G_12, SATA6G_34 and SATA6G_56 as well as SATA Express, what do the numbers after SATA6G stand for, are those ports identical spec wise?
I happen to have a Blu-Ray writer (That rarely gets used but still) as well (Making it so that I will be using 3 SATA ports in total after this installation), so does it matter which of the SATA6 ports that its connected to?
Just some cool images to give the topic a little extra color (The one in the middle is displaying my SATA ports)
See section 1-24
or "page 36" if that's what your PDF reader refers to.
That goes in to much more detail and it should be very obvious - but set (A) is Express and set (B) is regular 6Gb/sec
Not in the slightest. It wouldn't even max out SATA 3/Gb/s I'm fairly certain, and you don't even have any of those Put it on any of the 4x 6Gb/sec connectors on in the (B) set.
SATA6G_12 for example means "SATA6G ports 1 and 2".
It just refers to them like this because they are probably "under" each-other when you look at it from above, so it can't point to them individually on the diagram.
All ports in set (A) are identical. All ports in set (B) are identical.
SATA6G_12 for example means "SATA6G ports 1 and 2".
It just refers to them like this because they are probably "under" each-other when you look at it from above, so it can't point to them individually on the diagram.
All ports in set (A) are identical. All ports in set (B) are identical.
Aha okay, yeah the SATA ports are stacked 2 and 2 (I attached an image on my post above now in afterhand (I know my cable management is just legendary but my excuse is that its a non modular psu, lol))
See section 1-24
or "page 36" if that's what your PDF reader refers to.
That goes in to much more detail and it should be very obvious - but set (A) is Express and set (B) is regular 6Gb/sec
Aha, lol I thought you meant the pages 1-24, Im just opening the pdf in Edge and it just shows pages in the top left corner. I can see the express ports on my mobo now, they're both free to use (But for now I will let my current drive stay on the SATA6 port its currently installed on)
I will come back here if I get any further questions, otherwise I will update you once I've finished the installation, everything seems quite clear and straight forward
No problem. If you respond here again I will be notified and come back to reply
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Thanks
