NB – If this issue relating to dissimilar hardware sounds like it might be relevant to your own disk cloning or PC migration issues, then please note I have marked-out any software titles supporting cloning to such dissimilar hardware in the list below! Such specialist cloning or image backup software will be able to automatically adapt the existing disk contents so as to either remove any proprietary hardware drivers during the cloning operation (meaning generic Windows drivers can be temporarily used) or simply allow for them to be replaced (either automatically or manually) prior to the coning operation commencing. In such cases it will be most likely be necessary to make use of specialist disk cloning software which can accommodate the cloning (or recovery of a disk image backup) onto dissimilar hardware!

One potential issue which might occur when migrating an existing system onto a new or different device is that the existing drivers installed on the current system won’t be compatible with the new hardware. With disk cloning software, as we have already discovered, the entire system as it currently stands (including the operating system, all user data and any installed software) can all be copied over to a new PC with very little fuss. This process is often time consuming at best and potentially very costly if the installation media for certain software is unavailable, often resulting in the need to re-purchase the application in question thus taking up time and adding even more cost to a system migration! One of the biggest problems with acquiring a brand-new PC is that all user data must be migrated over from an older, existing PC and any Windows applications which are in-use must also potentially be re-installed, re-licenced and reconfigured. Yes, this ability to copy applications which are already installed upon an existing system is one of the main reasons disk cloning software has become so useful, but let’s consider a common example to get more details on how this might actually work.

Mini tool partition wizard portabl