Bootable Duplicated Hard Drives

Many of our clients come to us with the same issue from different industries: How can they create a replacement hard drive for an old or outdated machine? Sometimes the machine's manufacturers don't support the old equipment but this equipment is still in use at these facilities but are only failing possibly due to a bad hard drive. It just does not make sense to replace the whole machine when all you need is a replacement hard drive. In some cases, the manufacturer wants you to re-buy the old software and will charge thousands of dollars for this. If you already have the software on an old hard drive, the better solution would be to just clone the old drive and replace it back into your system. There are many reasons why our client's need to create a duplicated bootable drive, but some have tried without any luck. Here are some items to consider when trying to create a duplicate bootable hard drive.

1. Get an exact model hard drive replacement or at least the closest you can find. These are old systems, so they have old hard drives. These old drives are sometimes hard to find these days and you end up paying a higher price for these old drives versus buying a new one! However, it's necessary when replacing into the old system because they just cannot keep up with a new drive and it's possible that the equipment is looking for specific information of the hard drive to ensure its compatibility.

2. Speak with the manufacturer about replacing the hard drives in the equipment, if they are still around. Tell them your issue and find out if they know if doing this is allowed by their system. You are most likely not the only one who has asked this question, so its a good chance that they would know if its possible or not. If they say yes, ask for some advice. If they say no, its best to try it on your own instead of trusting what they say in case they are trying to sell you a replacement.

3. Get a high quality professional duplicator to ensure your duplicate hard drive is an exact copy. Some clients have used low cost consumer level hard drive cloning equipment which are meant for simple tasks such as a PC or laptop hard drive duplication which can sacrifice a few missing sectors, but that is not the case when it comes to replacing a machine hard drive. Our Demi XG3020 is a great solution for this task since it handles all types of hard drives so you will never run into a machine that you will not be able to duplicate the drive from.

Follow these steps and you will have a better chance of creating a bootable duplicate hard drive to replace into your old equipment. Also, be sure the drive you are replacing the old one with is in good working condition! You don't want to run into this again, or create another backup while you're at it. Our solutions can also test the drives so you will be good for testing and duplicating! Good luck!