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It seems, according to Dell's own tools, that my trusty Precision's ssd is on the way out and they are accordingly dispatching a replacement.
Under normal circumstances I would usually take this as an opportunity to start afresh. I keep backups of all data so normally it's not the end of the world to lose a few hours, or days as the the case may be to rebuild the machine and get it back to the way I like it.
Time is not on my side at present so I need to cheat, taking a full image of the existing disk in order to restore it to the replacement when it arrives next week.
I've never tried this approach before and would be keen to know if others have and with what degree of success. Assuming that indeed it has been successful what would be their recommendation of a suitable product to carry this out.
The ssd in question has a capacity of 500gb. I have a NAS available with enough room to accommodate a backup of this size, alternatively I could always access some cloud storage.
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I use Macrium reflect.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Same here! I have used the free version for years with no issues to report 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Me too
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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me too
diligent hands rule....
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Me too. The paid version. I can also say that I have used it more than once to restore an image (of C drive: 500GB and D drive: 500GB) and it worked flawlessly and its performance was excellent.
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Me as well - I do partial backups every day and full clones on the weekend - done this for years now and only had to use the clone once, without a hitch 
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I use AOMEI Backupper (Standard version is free, Pro version adds some unnecessary bells and whistles)
It will image, transfer to a new device, and allow you to mount the image as a virtual disk if you just want to "pick bits off it". It will image to a NAS, but that's generally slower than to a USB drive.
It just works, which is why I bought it despite the bells and whistles not being needed.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I use AOMEI too (Thanks O.G.). My Acer desktop has an SSD and I back it up to my Raid+ NAS (USB attached). The NAS has 4 SSD drives in a RAID configuration, for a total of 11TB capacity.
I used ACRONIS in the past and did not like it as much as I like AOMEI.
In any event I don't worry about failing SSD's anymore.
I would not put anything in the cloud, because once it's there, I believe that it is available to any hacker that wants to take the trouble.
Repo Man
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I recently switched my Dell Inspiron 1TB hard drive to a similar sized SSD. I bought the SSD from Crucial and used their Acronis software to clone the image. The only difficulty was getting to the disk assembly, which is somewhat fiddly in a laptop. Once I had replaced the drive and re-assembled the laptop it booted up straight away, and fast.
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Exactly the same scenario as me, the supplied Acronis software worked a treat.
One thing to look out for, but as you're replacing SSD with SSD it might not be an issue for you. But I was going to a smaller SSD than the HDD it replaced and from what I remember, unless you tell it different, will will copy the same partition sizes as on the old disc and if you want to re-allocate space differently, you need to turn off the "Auto" mode and set it up manually or you could find that there is not enough space left for one of the partitions.
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I use Clonezilla for images (free). Gives a UI for dd.
I don't run Windows on bare hardware but I do use Veeam's Linux agent to backup my Linux system, includes a bootable recovery image. Community version is free. Client uses their ESXi backup and restore for virtual machines (mostly Windows servers). No affiliation here.
>64
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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I was going to recommend Clonezilla as well, until I read the paragraph where OP wants to save the disk image to a NAS.
Maybe it's because I've never really looked into its more advanced options, but isn't Clonezilla simply going to take over the target drive, as opposed to writing a backup file, which can then be restored elsewhere later?
If Clonezilla can do that (just create a file), I really need to take a deeper look.
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I always use Clonezilla to create an image on a USB drive. I don't remember actually using it to clone directly.
I have seen where people use it to write to network storage. I think the local user/password has to be the same as the NAS ones. Never done it myself.
>64
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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theoldfool wrote: I always use Clonezilla to create an image on a USB drive.
Good to know it can do that. I just may modify my backup habit so I have something a little more complete.
theoldfool wrote: I don't remember actually using it to clone directly.
I've always used Clonezilla exactly in this manner, as its name infers - to clone a disk directly onto another. I've never tried to create just a file.
theoldfool wrote: I have seen where people use it to write to network storage. I think the local user/password has to be the same as the NAS ones
One would presume that if you're specifying a network share as a target location, there would be some mechanism to prompt for credentials.
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dandy72 wrote: isn't Clonezilla simply going to take over the target drive,
Nope - not if you select Disk <==> Image, but it will produce a directory with multiple files that essentially contains a full dump of the disk in question.
And, no worries, it does work for Windows. At least, it did for me.
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Martijn Smitshoek wrote: not if you select Disk <==> Image
Cool. I will definitely check out that option.
Martijn Smitshoek wrote: And, no worries, it does work for Windows. At least, it did for me.
Indeed, if it works the way it "should", then a disk is a disk, and it shouldn't matter what file system is in use - and the operating system even less.
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You must be lucky as I've heard that SSDs don't usually give a warning.
My oldest (running) is a h/o server data drive that's been running 24/7 for about 6 years now. I've never had one fail yet. (knock on wood)
For disk cloning, I've used Acronis. Just last month I replaced the SSD in my 6 y/o laptop with a new, larger one but opted to reinstall everything fresh to get rid of the hp crapware and cruft.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Lately I got a brand new computer and wanted to migrate from it's 512GB SSD to a 2TB one.
I use AOMEI and I'm glad of doing it (Thanks OG), but seen that it doesn't cope well with UEFI so I was not able to do that.
I had a license of ACRONIS 2020 which worked very well.
But, and this could be interesting for you, some SSD come with the right to download a free of charge utility like that.
Hope this helps.
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I've used Paragon Hard Disk Manager tools for many years - as well as imaging, can also convert directly to a runnable VMWare VM etc.
Can be booted from a WinPE USB stick (or Linux) so doesn't need the host to be bootable...
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My personal aproach to imaging is a Linux live medium and dd. While dd not having any sort of a progress bar is a PITA, it works fine for low-level copying of disks.
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You can perform a bare metal/image backup with Veeam Backup for Windows.
It's free for personal use. The limitation is you can only specify one type of backup.
You will need to download the recovery image. You can create a bootable USB or just burn the ISO to disc that you will need for recovery.
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Any of the packages that let you do a disk clone should work. I’ve done this several times swapping spinners with SSDs on old laptops. I’ve used Aomei, Macrium and EaseUs. All worked. Best if you can create a separate boot medium (thumb drive or such) so you’re not trying to clone the disk you’re booting from. Or use another machine and hook both drives up to it using USB enclosures.
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Demiurg - Das Unruhe (Secrets of Black Smarts)[^]
So this is a funny one.
I've had this album in my CD collection for years, probably even like ten years or more.
I think I bought it from some guy who I used to buy CDs from on festivals and he recommended this to me.
Must've listened to it when I got home, didn't find it interesting and never listened to it again.
Until last week, because I was curious what it was.
Turned out to be a hell of an album!
Unfortunately, the only thing I can find from this band is that they're from Murmansk, Russia, and that they only released this album in 2004 before they split up.
And this song on YouTube is the only audio that's online.
At least it wasn't hard deciding which song to share.
If you can find this CD somewhere (plenty available on Discogs!) I can highly recommend it 
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