Cloning hard drives?

[slimslob]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Interesting to know, never knew. Thanks for that info.

Hans

I did some quick searches this morning.

[rthonpm]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Well this is all hardwares fault. Put in a good Network, backup server will have cat 7 cables and be able to trandfer with 10 gig. Best thing is i dont have to do anything, backups are done automatically every night.

So rip out miles of cabling, replace it all with brand new cables, upgrade any routers or switches in between to new ones with 10 GB connections, then upgrade the NIC's in the servers and clients as well. Seems like a lot of time and money for that particular solution.

It's all well and good to have a server with 10 GB NIC's, but if the rest of the infrastructure doesn't support it, you're still using a 1 GB connection across the pipe.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

So rip out miles of cabling, replace it all with brand new cables, upgrade any routers or switches in between to new ones with 10 GB connections, then upgrade the NIC's in the servers and clients as well. Seems like a lot of time and money for that particular solution.

It's all well and good to have a server with 10 GB NIC's, but if the rest of the infrastructure doesn't support it, you're still using a 1 GB connection across the pipe.

Thanks for saying that. All I could do was shake my head when I read it.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

I'll just drop this in here.

A while back I started advertising that we do computer repair and we're getting a lot of laptop repairs. This continues to be a learning experience. Nothing too hard but there are a lot of delicate connectors and caution is needed.

Today I got in a HP Envy 360. This is a very thin laptop with a 15" OLED HD touch screen.

When the customer brought it in the screen was cracked and needed to be replaced. I looked the screen up by the part number and almost ordered it. It cost a little over $200. But something told me to call my friend who is a computer expert and I'm glad I did. It turns out that this particular model has 3-variations of screen for the same model laptop. The only difference is that the connectors are in a different spot on the screen. You must order the right one.

Otherwise, this is a pretty easy repair and doesn't take much time.



PS - I also invested in a magnifying glass with a light that is mounted on an adjustable stand. I needed to be able to see all the small connectors and parts. But it's kind of awkward, so I invested in a :


101Color Head Mount Magnifier Glasses with Detachable Ultra Bright LED Head Lamp - 5 Interchangeable Lenses: 1.0X, 1.5X, 2.0X, 2.5X, 3.5X Magnification


Amazon.com: 101Color Head Mount Magnifier Glasses with Detachable Ultra Bright LED Head Lamp - 5 Interchangeable Lenses: 1.0X, 1.5X, 2.0X, 2.5X, 3.5X Magnification : Health & Household

[slimslob]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

PS - I also invested in a magnifying glass with a light that is mounted on an adjustable stand. I needed to be able to see all the small connectors and parts. But it's kind of awkward, so I invested in a :


101Color Head Mount Magnifier Glasses with Detachable Ultra Bright LED Head Lamp - 5 Interchangeable Lenses: 1.0X, 1.5X, 2.0X, 2.5X, 3.5X Magnification


Amazon.com: 101Color Head Mount Magnifier Glasses with Detachable Ultra Bright LED Head Lamp - 5 Interchangeable Lenses: 1.0X, 1.5X, 2.0X, 2.5X, 3.5X Magnification : Health & Household

I have always used a goose-neck mounted magnifying glass with attached lamp. Years ago they used a circline fluorescent bulbs but now use LED arrays.

[techsxge]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Cat7 specification is a proprietary standard developed by a group of companies. It is not an IEEE standard and is not approved by TIA/EIA. Considering the fact that USB 3.1/SuperSpeed interfaces, devices and cables will also support 10 Gbps data transfer rates.

In addition USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) recently released the specifications for the new USB4 capable of 80 Gbps. https://usb.org/sites/default/files/...t_FINAL_v2.pdf

cat6a does the trick as well

Besides that, Cat7 is an ISO IEC Standard. If you want to have a TIA Approved one, get Cat8

[slimslob]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

cat6a does the trick as well

Besides that, Cat7 is an ISO IEC Standard. If you want to have a TIA Approved one, get Cat8

Even more expensive to convert the entire network to when USB will accomplish the job.

[techsxge]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Even more expensive to convert the entire network to when USB will accomplish the job.

Sure thing, atleast when you have to manage companies with less than 200 Users.

If you have larger companies with 1000+ Users, where they are all working at the same schedule (8am-5pm), some of them will even work longer so your time windows for backups goes from 8+ hours to a small amount of maybe 5-6 hours and you have to backup a few hundred GB everyday, you'll be more happy to have spend some extra money on better Speed.
USB is an option if you have to do a small backup like once a month but not if you're doign it daily.

[slimslob]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Sure thing, atleast when you have to manage companies with less than 200 Users.

If you have larger companies with 1000+ Users, where they are all working at the same schedule (8am-5pm), some of them will even work longer so your time windows for backups goes from 8+ hours to a small amount of maybe 5-6 hours and you have to backup a few hundred GB everyday, you'll be more happy to have spend some extra money on better Speed.
USB is an option if you have to do a small backup like once a month but not if you're doign it daily.

I doubt very much if there are companies that do full backups of every computers every day. I also doubt if they require their employees to do those backups. All critical data is stored on file servers which normally use some type of RAID and are automatically backed up over night to off line storage. Many majored corporations even use multiple mirrored servers. CAT 7 or 8 may be needed between the servers and the main switch bank to handle the traffic but after that the switches distribute the load.

[rthonpm]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Any company that's wasting storage and backup licensing on client endpoints should be laughed out of business. A general use laptop or desktop should be the most disposable part of IT operations. Data policies are easy to write and enforce from an IT perspective that anything not stored in a shared resource such as a network drive, SharePoint, Teams, database, etc is not backed up and no heroic efforts will be made to recover any such data. With OneDrive and other data mobility tools there's very little excuse for any company to be backing up every endpoint on their system when they can deploy a new machine, redirect some folders to a resilient data source and everything is there.

Special purpose machines, like a workstation that controls some kind of instrumentation, are good candidates for backups, but the regular computers for Joe, Jane, and Tom: no need to back them up unless you just want to throw away storage space and really make the sales guy for your backup system make his quarterly goal in one sale.

[tonerhead]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

I'll just drop this in here.

A while back I started advertising that we do computer repair and we're getting a lot of laptop repairs. This continues to be a learning experience. Nothing too hard but there are a lot of delicate connectors and caution is needed.

Today I got in a HP Envy 360. This is a very thin laptop with a 15" OLED HD touch screen.

When the customer brought it in the screen was cracked and needed to be replaced. I looked the screen up by the part number and almost ordered it. It cost a little over $200. But something told me to call my friend who is a computer expert and I'm glad I did. It turns out that this particular model has 3-variations of screen for the same model laptop. The only difference is that the connectors are in a different spot on the screen. You must order the right one.

Otherwise, this is a pretty easy repair and doesn't take much time.



PS - I also invested in a magnifying glass with a light that is mounted on an adjustable stand. I needed to be able to see all the small connectors and parts. But it's kind of awkward, so I invested in a :


101Color Head Mount Magnifier Glasses with Detachable Ultra Bright LED Head Lamp - 5 Interchangeable Lenses: 1.0X, 1.5X, 2.0X, 2.5X, 3.5X Magnification


Amazon.com: 101Color Head Mount Magnifier Glasses with Detachable Ultra Bright LED Head Lamp - 5 Interchangeable Lenses: 1.0X, 1.5X, 2.0X, 2.5X, 3.5X Magnification : Health & Household

Funny. I bought the same thing. A great tool. But the focalpoint is somewhat short. The focus at 3.5x is like 6 inches. Mostly use mine for soldering small items

[tonerhead]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

So, if I buy a USB to SATA adapter, I should be able to clone straight to the new SSD and bypass the external SSD?

The way I'm doing it now to to make a mirror image on an external drive and then transfer to the new SSD.

Depends on the adapter also. I used to have an el-cheapo that worked fine. That broke and the current el-cheapo will not do it for some reason. I do have an hdd toaster that I use for that purpose. Clonezilla is what I use, hasn't failed me yet. The only bad thing about clonezilla, is it doesn't work with nvme very well. At least for me.

[BillyCarpenter]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Any company that's wasting storage and backup licensing on client endpoints should be laughed out of business. A general use laptop or desktop should be the most disposable part of IT operations. Data policies are easy to write and enforce from an IT perspective that anything not stored in a shared resource such as a network drive, SharePoint, Teams, database, etc is not backed up and no heroic efforts will be made to recover any such data. With OneDrive and other data mobility tools there's very little excuse for any company to be backing up every endpoint on their system when they can deploy a new machine, redirect some folders to a resilient data source and everything is there.

Special purpose machines, like a workstation that controls some kind of instrumentation, are good candidates for backups, but the regular computers for Joe, Jane, and Tom: no need to back them up unless you just want to throw away storage space and really make the sales guy for your backup system make his quarterly goal in one sale.

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I should say this. But what the hell.

Everyone once in a while a person will pop in this forum and they have this attitude like they know it all and they ramble on and on about how things are supposed to be done. I'm not gonna call any name. It should be obvious who I'm talking about. Hint: he's been posting in this thread.

It should have been obvious to him that rthonpm knows his shit. He's not gonna pull the wool over his eyes. slim saw thru him, too. It's no shame in not knowing something and it's an opportunity to learn. People who pretend to know more than they do never learn anything.

Rant off.

[techsxge]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

Any company that's wasting storage and backup licensing on client endpoints should be laughed out of business. A general use laptop or desktop should be the most disposable part of IT operations. Data policies are easy to write and enforce from an IT perspective that anything not stored in a shared resource such as a network drive, SharePoint, Teams, database, etc is not backed up and no heroic efforts will be made to recover any such data. With OneDrive and other data mobility tools there's very little excuse for any company to be backing up every endpoint on their system when they can deploy a new machine, redirect some folders to a resilient data source and everything is there.

Special purpose machines, like a workstation that controls some kind of instrumentation, are good candidates for backups, but the regular computers for Joe, Jane, and Tom: no need to back them up unless you just want to throw away storage space and really make the sales guy for your backup system make his quarterly goal in one sale.

We do not back those up as there are not supposed to be any important files on there. We only backup daily the DMS, All Fileservers and VM Hosts + Weekly the DC's.
Still makes for a great amount of storage considering this is one of the leading architects company in germany.
From what i've heard, many Businesses in the United States don't give so much on their data then the ones in germany/eu but thats just a rumor over here.

Anyways, this whole topic just went from "How can i clone a HDD to a SSD" to "How should we do backups and what network would i need" so i think this is getting out of place now

[slimslob]

Re: Cloning hard drives?

We do not back those up as there are not supposed to be any important files on there. We only backup daily the DMS, All Fileservers and VM Hosts + Weekly the DC's.
Still makes for a great amount of storage considering this is one of the leading architects company in germany.
From what i've heard, many Businesses in the United States don't give so much on their data then the ones in germany/eu but thats just a rumor over here.

Anyways, this whole topic just went from "How can i clone a HDD to a SSD" to "How should we do backups and what network would i need" so i think this is getting out of place now

Then why the hell did you say in your last post

If you have larger companies with 1000+ Users,

BTW you are the one who caused the change of topic.