Emigrating and need to backup/clone my harddrive

[armandkoch]

Hey guys!

I’m hoping someone here can help a guy out! I’m emigrating at the end of the year and I’m going to sell of all my PC parts including the harddrives as I’ve been told the customs control in Australia clones your harddrive if you take one in. Obviously I’m not quite for that so I’m looking for a way to store all my data online and download it to a new harddrive bought on that side.

The catch is that I have software on my PC that was a once off purchase to install and if it’s lost I need to buy it again. So I need to find a way to sort of clone my harddrive so that I can download it on that side and I ideally want it to run as if I just plugged the old harddrive into that PC.

Anyone know if this is possible?

 

[TRINITRON]

How many TBs?

There are a few ways to achieve viable solutions to your issue but any suitable recommendations would be dependant on the size

 

[armandkoch]

Hi @TRINITRON!

Thanks for the response! It would be ideal to clone the entire harddrive of about 500 GB, but I am capable of limiting it to the really necessary programs which is less than 50 GB in total.

 

[solz]

Depending on the size of all the data required for the clone, I think cheapest storage would be onedrive as you can get the home alpackage that includes like 1tb of space for the year. Use a program like acronis to clone and save this to onedrive. Just mighthave to split the archive into multiple pieces as onedrive might have a max size limit per file.

I have done this and also used windows backup and other option I have done is make a virtual of my pc and store it in the cloud.

 

[armandkoch]

Thanks @solz !

 

[TRINITRON]

I would suggest perhaps window's DISM tool or similar to create a clone which you could leave as is or turn into an iso etc and then either cloud storage (one drive has a file size limit of 250GB) or turn it into a torrent file and get someone you trust this side to store it on their pc.

 

[VolderTort]

Cant you just take a hard drive with the software but no other personal stuff?
Perhaps use bitlocker as well?

 

[Luc]

Cloning tools have the ability to remove bitlocker and something tells me they might request a drive be unlocked.

I'd suggest maybe looking into if you can send a ssd to someone there already and if this bypasses the copy rule?

For the actual backup and restore I'd suggest looking at Acronis backup which is done to their cloud storage and allows for restoration to bare metal system again. I would strongly urge testing this first of course. We can restore virtual machines easily but never tried bare metal as this could go wrong on different hardware so maybe a bit of research?

 

[Serenath]

Try using Macrium Reflect to image the drive, and then make a macrium bootable usb as well and use the restore to dissimilar hardware option when restoring the image.

As mentioned above maybe test it first this side on a VM or another PC with different hardware.

 

[Scrooloose]

DriveImage XML is completely free.

DriveImage XML Backup Software — Data Recovery

There's a drive encryption tool called VeraCrypt, which can create a hidden volume within an existing encrypted volume. So if someone insists on you unlocking the encrypted drive, there's still a hidden volume that is not unlocked. Store your drive clone in that hidden volume and you should be golden.

That said, none of my mates who have moved to Australia were asked to share their data. While the TSA have the right to seize and search your digital media, it's on exception and if you don't look like some dodgy oke you'd more than likely just walk right through.

 

[Morne Jordaan]

Hi there man.

So I use.

Macrium Reflect Free Trials

Basically clones a disk from one drive to another and windows doesn't even realize anything changed.

But in your situation , I would just take my Hard drive with me , and look for the same motherboard overseas.

 

[SpaceWalker]

@Morne Jordaan there's a strict anti-piracy rule here, so I suggest you edit your post.

@armandkoch
Use Disk2vhd - Sysinternals

Convert the drive to a VHDX.
Slap it on a large flash drive or upload on Dropbox, cheapest temporary online unlimited storage.

You just double click and mount the VHD/X on any PC and you'll see your full drive content.

 

[shabbirss]

bump for macrium reflect.
i cloned my hard drive before installing an SSD with it.
the clone image size was much smaller than what i expected it to be.
obviously better if u remove all the unnecessary stuff firsst, keep only important stuff on.

theres also mediafire, mega.co.nz,google drive etc

maybe clone/image the drive and save it?

 

[SomeoneOnCarbonite]

Almost all commercial tools are open to all governments and legally they are supposed to be. You need an open source tool, such as the old truecrypt. Or veracrypt. I don't know if veracrypt supports hidden containers like truecrypt used to. It is impossible to get into, without the password, with current technology.

I would happily assist you in keeping a copy of your data, since you said it's only 50GB, and we can figure out how to get it back to you on the other side again. You can choose to encrypt or not encrypt, I don't need to see your porn 😂