How to Clone a Hard Drive (Windows 10)

Well I decided I was do this tutorial cause I'm sure a lot of people find this hard to do.  Its a rather simple tutorial and should have you on your way to recovering your broken Windows hard drive unless of course its completely broke.

Now what I recommend is a program called AOMEI Backupper which is available for free.  There is a paid version but one of the features that maybe useless to you is what you pay for.  Its a system clone which means you can clone your Windows system without all that other data so its like basically have a fully clean Windows OS.  Instead we will be using Disk Clone which clones the Windows system and data over.

You can grab the free or paid version here:
http://www.backup-utility.com/free-backup-software.html

Now go ahead and install the software and then open it up.

Now comes the steps on cloning your broken Windows hard drive to a new hard drive.

The first thing your going to want to do is click on the clone tab on the left side and click disk clone.  Which will copy over the system (Windows) plus the data.

Alright so now we want to select the drive you want to clone from which will be your source hard drive.  For me it will be the C: drive which should be yours as well it might be a different letter.  Just remember that there is two partitions and if not maybe more depending on the version of Windows your using.

Now we want to select the destination for the source system and data to go to.  Remember I would recommend to have a fully formatted hard drive cause your going to want to remove that broken piece of junk for this new hard drive.  I don't have a image for this one but it should be self explanatory.  

Okay so on the next screen you have options on how you want to do these clones.  You can choose the layout for the partition on the destination drive if you want to do it that way.  For me choosing manually made a messy clone that didn't perform properly and I had bad performance.  Not sure what happened but after the first mess up I decided to choose the option sector by sector and then after I was finished I booted the OS from the cloned destined drive and manually extended to use my whole drive.  The clone performed well and works perfectly.

There is another option that I would recommend selected if you have a SSD so select it if you have one.  I am not sure if this is required and don't know how well it'll work but I recommend this as it may be dependent on how well the drive will perform after the copy.  If you don't have an SSD then don't click it.

Screenshot courtesy of: AOMEI (https://goo.gl/N1UOSe)

Then start your clone and your ready to go.  This should take a little while depending on the size of the source.

After your done get in your PC remove the broken hard drive and replace it with the new hard drive.  Make sure to go to your bios and change your boot settings to match your new hard drive so it'll boot straight to Windows.

If Windows has booted the clone then the process should have worked and quite possibly the performance should work great as well.

Next lets go to disk management to extend the data partition of your C: drive.  Just right click on the partition which is where all the data should be and press extend.  Now of course your probably wanting to use the full drive but if you aren't you can select the amount of space you want to extend so select your numbers wisely.  Other then that if you ready to go and use that full drive just click next and your whole drive should be used.

Sorry I have no screenshots for this part if you need any help just search Google on "how to extend a hard drive".

Now you should be able to use your computer like you previously did with that broken drive without the worries that your hard drive is on the way out.

If this tutorial didn't work out for you I highly suggest you use AOMEI's support site.  It'll have all the information there for you.  http://www.backup-utility.com/features/system-clone.html

Iron Commando and Legend IndieGogo

I know I haven't posted news here in awhile and its cause I've been trying to change things up a bit.  But I guess I'll post something a little news related here right now.  There is 4 days left for the Iron Commando and Legend IndieGogo made by Piko Interactive.  There is lots of gifts to be grabbed depending on what you have pledged for the game.  There is still 12 grabs left for the Iron Commando and Legend downloads for PC.  Grab them quick but look at what else is up for grabs if your interested in anything else.

Both games are kind of rare for the SNES and now you'll have a chance to be able to play them.


Please check the following link for more information and hopefully we will see this game come to PC and SNES

Make a pledge at:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/iron-commando-legend-for-super-nintendo-videogames#/

Belkin N Wireless USB Adapter F5D8053 (Windows 8 and 10 fix)

I'm just going to leave you a few links on how to get this Wireless USB adapter to work with your Windows 8 and 10 operating systems.  I didn't find much information regarding this fix for Windows 10 and there is a few links out there that will show you how to get these files for Windows 8.  I feel its always important to get this information on more sites as possible which is why i'm sharing these today.

I'd like to thank whoever made the fix and drivers in which I don't know who they are but when times comes I'll add their names here.  I bought the adapter for my mother knowing that I might come across an issue trying to get it to work on her Windows 10 x64 based system.  I found these files on a website in which I can't even remember where from and it made it work on her system.

First you are going to want to download and read the faq in which was not created by me.  It can be downloaded here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yspw86r5uh8qapj/Belkin%20F5D8053%20N%20Wirelss%20Adapter%20Driver%20Install.pdf?dl=0

Next your going to want the drivers in which are associated with that faq and are the only ones that will work with it.  You can  grab the files here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6wlu320ytctnip4/Belkin_Wifi_Adapter_Driver_and_faq.zip?dl=0

Star Wars Racer (Physical Windows 10 fix)

Now a lot of this information has come from (PC Gaming Wiki) http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_Episode_I_%E2%80%93_Racer

There is a bunch of information on how to fix Star Wars Racer for Windows 10 from that site. I chose the simplest bit of information from the site that should most definitely get this game running on your computer with Windows 10 x64.

First off your going to want to install the game manually no game patches or fixes and don't even try with the CD-ROM cause it will not work.  So what were going to want to do first is create a folder at C:\games\racer.  Choose what is best for you but later we'll be making a reg file which will be specific to this location however you can manually edit it yourself to the specific location you have the game installed.

Next your going to want to grab all the files and folder from the gnome folder on the CD-ROM and copy them over to C:\games\racer.  Go to the root of the disk grab racer.exe and copy and paste that over to C:\games\racer.  Now go to the install folder on the CD-ROM grab the following DSETUP.dll, DSETUP16.dll DSETUP32.dll, SysCheck.exe, SYSCHECK.INI and Website.exe and copy them over to C:\games\racer.

Your layout should look like this:

Now were going to want to open notepad and copy the following information.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Star Wars: Episode I Racer\v1.0]

"Install Path"="C:\\Games\\RACER"

"Executable"="C:\\Games\\RACER\\SWEP1RCR.EXE"

"Source Path"="D:"

"CD Path"="D:"

"Analyze Path"="D:\\INSTALL\\SysCheck.exe"

"Source Dir"="D:\\"

"InstallType"=dword:00000009

"Display"="Primary Display Driver"

"3D Device"="Microsoft Direct3D Hardware acceleration through Direct3D HAL"

"Display Width"=dword:00000400

"Display Height"=dword:00000300

"GUID"="{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}"

"FullScreen"=dword:00000000

"Fix Flicker"=dword:00000000

"DevMode"=dword:00000000

"UseFett"=dword:00000000

Now remember how I said earlier that you can edit the paths of your drives so you can edit the following before saving. 

"Install Path"="C:\\Games\\RACER" [Install Path]

"Executable"="C:\\Games\\RACER\\SWEP1RCR.EXE" [Install Path]

"Source Path"="D:" [CD-ROM]

"CD Path"="D:" [CD-ROM]

"Analyze Path"="D:\\INSTALL\\SysCheck.exe" [CD-ROM]

"Source Dir"="D:\\" [CD-ROM]

So save the file as racer.reg place it anywhere and double click it.  Press okay and get ready for the next steps.

Now next your going to want to download dgvoodoo 2.54 from http://dege.freeweb.hu/

Now open dgVoodoo2_54.zip and drag over all the files to the root of C:\games\racer.  Next grab all the files from the MS folder and put them into C:\games\racer.

This is what the folder should look like now:

Now were going to want to open dgVoodooCpl.exe and change the following to as exactly what is shown in the picture.  Note though the first under config folder / running instance should be pressed to automatically set to the install folder or this won't work and once done move to the next items circled.

Next we'll want to go to the DirectX tab where we can change our graphics settings and remove the dgvoodoo watermark (only if you have tested to see if its working).

Once you are done settling this all up click apply and get ready to play your game in high resolution.  Enjoy playing this in 4k if you have a 4k TV!  

(WARNING)  You may possibly have two mouse pointers on the screen.  Ignore the basic mouse pointer and use the blue one you can see it if you move the mouse around a little bit.  You'll be able to fully enjoy this game with this small issue.

Now how about some screenshots: