best software/way to EXACTLY duplicate a hard drive

[LongCoolMother]

im getting a new 160GB hard drive soon and i want to move all of my stuff exactly as it is (including OS and everything) to the new hard drive from my current 40GB. i really dont feel like reinstalling windows and all my stuff all over again on the new hard drive, so i wanted to just copy the image on my current hard drive over to the new one.

whats the best software to do this? also, i sure hope windows doesnt ask me to re-activate after switching the hard drive. its going to be a hassle if the reactivation doesnt work because of a too different hardware change and i have to call *sigh*.

 

[wfbberzerker]

norton ghost

 

[Yanagi]

Yup, Norton ghost is the best way to do this. Create an image of the drive, then ghost it onto the 160gb one.. im not sure but i think theres a possibillity to span ghost images or am i completely off line here?

 

[Kenazo]

Partition magic can do it too.


Does winxp let you transfer to a different hard drive, or is that one of those things that triggers a re-installation?

 

[PhoenixOrion]

norton ghost or proprietary windows app specific to hard drive brand, ie maxblast for maxtor drives, data lifeguard for western digitals, etc, etc.

 

[CraigRT]

Norton Ghost

used it merely a week ago to transfer my 60gb drive to a 160 at work...works like a charm, every time.

 

[Cheetah8799]

Norton ghost in DOS is what I use.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: LongCoolMother
im getting a new 160GB hard drive soon and i want to move all of my stuff exactly as it is (including OS and everything) to the new hard drive from my current 40GB. i really dont feel like reinstalling windows and all my stuff all over again on the new hard drive, so i wanted to just copy the image on my current hard drive over to the new one.

whats the best software to do this? also, i sure hope windows doesnt ask me to re-activate after switching the hard drive. its going to be a hassle if the reactivation doesnt work because of a too different hardware change and i have to call *sigh*.

You can download xpinfo from the link below and find out how many changes your windows XP considers you have made so far.
http://www.licenturion.com/xp/
You can have 3 changes and still not have to re-activate. Changing the network card counts for 3.

There are 10 items that XP monitors. The master hard drive and the id label on the XP partition are two of those items.
If you use an image utility like Ghost or drive image, you will replicate the lable ID and it will not change. There is a way to change the lable id if needed. So, it is a good idea to record the current label id also.
Open a command prompt and type: label c:
I am assuming that your XP is on drive C.

Edit:
So, if you run xpinfo now and see that you have had 2 changes or less, after adding the new drive as your master drive, you will have had 3 or less changes and will not have to call.

 

[SuPrEIVIE]

true image7 can do this too right?

 

[vshah]

Originally posted by: wfbberzerker
norton ghost

thats the one

 

[Trey22]

Personally, I use and love Acronis TrueImage... let's you do a complete image from within Windows.

 

[peter7921]

Use Ghost or Drive Image

Edit: It looks like Symantec now owns PowerQuest lol, so i guess you only have one option.

 

[LTC8K6]

I always use the drive mfr's tools "drive to drive" copy function.

 

[GfW]

Acronis True Image

 

[Luthien]

Norton Ghost no thanks to anything else.

 

[geologist]

Acronis TrueImage 7.0 is awesome, and you can span images across dvds or cds.

 

[Fern]

Like said above, Norton Ghost. I prefer the "clone feature" under the advanced features tab. When you're done cloning you'll have an exact copy, no need to restore (as with regualr ghosting).

 

[13black]

Most hard drive manufacturers have software specifically for that very purpose. It's a free download if it didn't come with the drive. It's easy to use and FREE.

 

[Bulldog13]

You don't need any stinking non-Free software to make ghost images.

Here's how you do it:

0. Set up a recipient (either a second hard disk, a machine on the network - whatever - I do it over the network)
1. Boot Knoppix on the machine you want to ghost.
2. Mount the destination.
3. dd if=/dev/hda bs=128K | gzip > /path/to/image.gz

To restore:
0. Set up the source.
1. Boot Knoppix on the machine you want to install.
3. Mount the source.
4. gzip -dc /path/to/image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda bs=128K

Tips: Overwrite any free space on the machine you want to ghost with a huge file filled with 0x00, then delete the file. The disk image will compress much better as you've scrubbed the deleted files.

I use a system like this to ghost many machines at a time (an image server can easily deal out 30+ images at once). It'd cost a fortune to license many copies of ghosting software - with Knoppix and a very small shell script, I've got an automated system which will do many machines at once. (A typical 40GB fresh WinXP install with our apps compresses to under 1GB with gzip).
If you're doing WinXP, remember to either make a Sysprep build or use something like System Internals free (open source but not truly free) tool to change the SID and hostname of the machine when it's booted the first time. (This is the approach we use due to the limitations of sysprep)

From here : http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/16/1326207&tid=172

 

[slipONflange]

Acronis True Image

 

[imported_Bunter]

I've used DriveImage many times to do this. Works fine. Never used Ghost, but have heard good things about it.

 

[ss284]

If you are just copying one drive over, use the provided applications, they are more than sufficient and work perfectly. If you are doing some backup, or imaging multiple drives, get ghost or true image(I trust ghost more IMHO)

-Steve

 

[LongCoolMother]

Originally posted by: Navid

Originally posted by: LongCoolMother
im getting a new 160GB hard drive soon and i want to move all of my stuff exactly as it is (including OS and everything) to the new hard drive from my current 40GB. i really dont feel like reinstalling windows and all my stuff all over again on the new hard drive, so i wanted to just copy the image on my current hard drive over to the new one.

whats the best software to do this? also, i sure hope windows doesnt ask me to re-activate after switching the hard drive. its going to be a hassle if the reactivation doesnt work because of a too different hardware change and i have to call *sigh*.

You can download xpinfo from the link below and find out how many changes your windows XP considers you have made so far.
http://www.licenturion.com/xp/
You can have 3 changes and still not have to re-activate. Changing the network card counts for 3.

There are 10 items that XP monitors. The master hard drive and the id label on the XP partition are two of those items.
If you use an image utility like Ghost or drive image, you will replicate the lable ID and it will not change. There is a way to change the lable id if needed. So, it is a good idea to record the current label id also.
Open a command prompt and type: label c:
I am assuming that your XP is on drive C.

Edit:
So, if you run xpinfo now and see that you have had 2 changes or less, after adding the new drive as your master drive, you will have had 3 or less changes and will not have to call.

thanks. i got xpinfo and ran it. according to that, every single item is checked, so i didnt change any hardware at all since my activation (which is correct). therefore this hardware change shouldnt be a problem.

thanks for the recomendations. i have norton ghost and my friend has a copy of partition magic i may be able to borrow.w00t. no need for buying software.

 

[drag]

I use dd,

make a drive image,

dd if=/dev/hda of=drive.img

make a partition image

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=partition.img

make a cdrom ISO image

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cdrom.iso

make a floppy image

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=floppy.img

copy a harddrive image to a harddrive

dd if=drive.img of=/dev/hda

duplicate a harddrive

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

duplicate a floppy

dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/fd0


with more complicated scripts you can compress images, move images from one computer to another. Do all sorts of fun stuff. Also dd is good for copying files, or translating files from one data format to another, like say from a incompatable tape format to a normal readable file. Stuff like that.

But of course you have to know a bit of Linux or Unix to use it first. Comes standard with every linux, unix OS in existance. Comes on floppy-based distros. That sort of thing.