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General discussion

Replace desktop IDE internal hard drive

Jul 24, 2009 10:39PM PDT

I suspect my internal hard drive is failing. I have backed up the drive to an external 500gb drive. Did it copy all my programs and the operating system? Can I copy this backup to a new internal replacement drive, pull the old drive, and boot from the new drive? What are the instructions for doing this?

Discussion is locked

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You don't say.
Jul 25, 2009 1:13PM PDT
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If you clone it, yes.
Jul 26, 2009 12:05AM PDT

If you "back it up", no. In this case you must have an operating system installed first to run the restore function.

Cloning makes an exact copy. Then you just swap the drive and boot to the new exact copy.