Dual booted (Win7, Linux Mint) 1TB disk-to-disk clone success - using DVD connection!

[Sean Stud]

In case it's of any interest to others - I've just completed the above clone on an Acer X3400 desktop using Clonezilla Live.

I had been looking on Amazon UK for USB hardware disk cloners, but the cheapest I could find was about £20 and not reported as particularly reliable.

I then happened to notice, when putting my new (2nd hand ebay) disk into my machine for SMART testing, that the SATA power and signal cable connections for the HDD were the same as the cables for the DVD drive.

Being a tightwad, and 20 quid being 20 quid, I disconnected the DVD and tried connecting the new HDD to the disconnected DVD cables, and was surprised - but happy - to see that it showed up on the screen as an additional internal hard drive.

It was then just a case of re-booting into Clonezilla Live (from a bootable USB stick - http://www.clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php), and following the onscreen instructions for cloning in disk-to-disk mode, - and it worked perfectly, copying all 6 partitions over to the new drive. - Took a little over an hour or so and it didn't require any interim saving to RAM or USB etc.

I then just had to take out the old drive, move the new drive from the DVD to the HDD SATA connections, then reconnect the DVD and reboot.

Maybe this is a common cloning trick - I haven't read through the whole forum, and I've never cloned anything before - but it worked great for me - and saved me time (and £20).

Whether it's possible on a laptop or a non-SATA desktop I don't know.

EDIT: Changed spelling error of 'suprised' to 'surprised'

[Steven Shiau]

It's nice to know Clonezilla works for you.
Thanks for sharing that.

Steven.