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My manager at work just bought a new HDD from HGST (retail version) for his laptop. They do not appear to provide any software to clone the old drive to the new drive. Are there any suggestions for a good/free way to do this? Thank you for any help.

I've used this methodology with good results a couple times.....probably not the most straightforward or instantaneous, but it does the job. Obviously this is to a new SSD instead of a regular HDD, but the basic process is generally applicable.

http://www.ssdfreaks.com/content/664/how-to-clone-hdd-to-ssd-with-windows-7s-own-software

Couple options:

Clonezilla is an awesome free bootable tool. It's wizard-based, but a bit linux-y (best to be comfortable with how linux does HDD enumeration, sda, sdb, etc).

Acronis used to have a free trial of "True Image Home" good for 30 days, which you could also try.

We've had several threads on cloning software over the years. I've had good results with the free version Macrium Reflect over the years (just used it a couple of months ago to migrate my system volume to a larger SSD).

UberGerbil wrote:

We've had several threads on cloning software over the years. I've had good results with the free version Macrium Reflect over the years (just used it a couple of months ago to migrate my system volume to a larger SSD).

I was looking at the Macrium, but I thought on the website that they specifically disable that functionality in the free version.

Try AOMEI Backupper.

Another bump for Clonezilla. You don't even really need any Linux knowledge to use it, because if you're only talking about a couple of disks you can work it all out from the sizes in GB.

I also use Clonezilla. Generally, if you can navigate the disc configuration options in an old-style text menu BIOS screen, you can navigate Clonezilla for two disks using mostly default settings. (If the destination disk is smaller than the source disk partition, then you will need to understand and modify some advanced settings.) However, it is highly advised to unplug any other disks from the system other than source, destination, and whatever you are using to boot Clonezilla.

apkellogg wrote:

UberGerbil wrote:

We've had several threads on cloning software over the years. I've had good results with the free version Macrium Reflect over the years (just used it a couple of months ago to migrate my system volume to a larger SSD).

I was looking at the Macrium, but I thought on the website that they specifically disable that functionality in the free version.

Acronis TrueImage specifically disables the "clone" functionality on their trial / free version, but Macrium does not. I just went to check the trial version of Macrium I have installed and it has expired, and that was the one I used, so at least as of a couple of months ago they were still allowing it. It's possible I somehow had an older version and/or they've changed it very recently.

ludi wrote:

However, it is highly advised to unplug any other disks from the system other than source, destination, and whatever you are using to boot Clonezilla.

Indeed! In fact, leave all the other disks unplugged while you boot Windows on the new disk for the first time also. One of the first times I swapped in an SSD for the system disk Windows had a fit, "repaired" itself, and I somehow ended up in a situation where the bootloader was on the "data" hard drive despite it not being the C: disk or the location of any of the Windows files. Needless to say, the expected improvement in boot time was somewhat underwhelming until I figured out the problem.