Hard Drive Cloning

As promised, the first piece I am posting is about hard drive cloning, what it is and why you may want to consider this as a serious option for your computer. Hard drive cloning is exactly what it sounds like, it's creating an exact clone or carbon copy of your present hard drive in your computer. Why would you want to do this? There are a number of reasons. For starters, it is the best backup of your files and operating system there is. If you have ever had a hard drive fail and you didn't back up your files before that failure, then you know how hard it was to go through the loss of all those files and the time spent creating them all.


Second, you not only lose all your files, you lose your operating system and all the software on it along with all the updates. One could argue that you can always buy a new hard drive and re load the OS from the disks that came with the computer. Well that is one option, but all you will gain is a new hard drive and a newly installed and out of date operating system that will take quite a bit of time to get all the updates back, then you have to start re loading all your software all over again. Now there is a potential problem with re loading all that software. If there is a key that has to be put in to make the program work, the key may not work on this re load. Why? The old key was tied to the old key of the last operating system.


But wait you say? The operating system has not changed? Well yes it has and no it has not. Each time you re load your operating system, the key changes for that operating system. The new key changes the way software is allowed to be loaded onto the computer. So even though it is still the same operating system, the computer considers it a new operating system as the key has changed. Therefore, any programs like Microsoft Office with a one user license will not work on the re loaded operating system even though it's the same computer. Not all is always lost. Companies such as Microsoft realize that the operating system does need to be re loaded from time to time, so if you call them and explain to them what has happened, they will usually issue you one more new key. If your hard drive becomes corrupted or quits again though, you are out of luck and on your own.


Now the Microsoft software is only one issue. There is also your anti virus software and anything else you have bought and loaded. What you want is an easy solution to avoid ever having to go through this nightmare and real time consuming process. So what to do? Well if you had cloned your hard drive, you would have an exact copy of your hard drive so should your hard drive fail or get corrupted, all you have to do is exchange hard drives and it's back in business like nothing ever happened. Zero Loss. Then you wipe the old corrupted hard drive or buy another hard drive and clone all over again. All of my computers are now cloned. All the time and frustrations I went through in the past before I learned this simple trick are now behind me.


One real note, the zero loss is not a true zero loss. There are files that you created after cloning your hard drive so those files will be missing from the clone.
My recommendation is to do what we all never get around to doing and that is back up those files onto a CD, DVD, Flash Drive, Pen Drive, External Hard Drive, or what have you. I always keep plenty of spare external hard drives around. They are worth their weight in Gold and are very cheap these days compared to what they used to cost.


Is hard drive cloning difficult or costly? Well it's not recommended for the average user to undertake as it is easy to make the wrong choice when setting up the procedure which could wipe out everything, but for the experienced user with the guts to try it, it's not really all that hard. The major part of the cost is the hard drive that will be used for cloning. It depends on what size you choose and I recommend that you buy a new hard drive that is about the same size as the one in your computer now. I charge about $60.00 for the cloning process itself before the cost of the new hard drive and there is also a visit fee that is charged depending on what market one is in. One can figure a rough cost of just under $200.00 for the entire package.


To some this may sound expensive, however what is your time worth if you loose everything and you also just lost that $600.00 Microsoft Office program? Remember, the clone is an exact carbon copy of your original hard drive including all the keys for the operating system and all the software. When I clone one of my own computers, I set the computer up with all the programs I want on it first, then I clone it. I back up my files periodically so the re load of the files is a breeze, and they can also be easily transfered to other computers as well.


I am sure you can easily see the value of this concept and service. I would be happy to clone your computer hard drive for you. Please give me a call. (I am taking into consideration that most of the people coming to this site are by invitation from me through one of my marketing pieces or business cards. If you have stumbled onto this site and would like help with this service, I can walk anyone through it but there will be an advanced fee that would have to be paid.)