Best way to migrate to new hard drive

[bruceb]

What is the best / most reliable method of moving from one
hard drive to a new one ? ? This is for a laptop. I have Norton
Ghost 2003 edition. Is it better to make an Image to another
drive and then Restore to the new drive or would doing a Clone
be the better choice ? ? If I do a clone can it be done on the
Laptop with the drive hooked up thru the IDE / USB Adapter ? ?
Does Clone work in DOS mode like Ghost does when it runs
an Image ? ?

Thanks for advice

 

[lxskllr]

I've used the drive manufacturers tools to clone my old drive to a new one using a USB adapter. It's a little slow going through the USB port, but it works.

 

[bruceb]

Can that be done on the same laptop pc
that I am changing the drive on ? ?
Does that utility or Ghost run the clone
operation in DOS mode ? ? (its only a 20GB
drive so it should not take too long)

Thanks

 

[Lorne]

It can run in the windows mode and works extremely well, Depending on how good your USB ports are and how fragmented the source is will affect how fast it can be done.

 

[alkemyst]

if your drive is supported the manufacters are free and reliable. Hitachi unfortuately was outsourced and now they charge for it. I used WD data lifeguard tools alot in the past.

For my last migration I used HDCLONE free and then resized the partition with partition magic on a free trial. There was another free product I used too that resized partitions well.

The free version of HDClone only operates at 300MB/s...it took about 8 hours to migrate my failing 120GB to a 750GB drive over IDE and SATA

 

[corkyg]

I do this regularly on two laptops using an external eSATA drive connected to an eSATA PCMCIA card I can put in each laptop as needed.

I boot the latop with Acronis TrueImage 11 "Rescue CD" and then clone the internal drive to the external eSATA drive. Takes about 15-20 minutes for a 160 GB drive.

I then replace the laptop's internal drive with the new one, and clone back from the eSATA external to the laptop's internal HD. That is faster - takes about 9 minutes.

For best results use bootable media with the clone function so the laptop's OS is not involved at all.

TrueImage's bootable Rescue Media CD does not run in DOS - it uses a Linux GUI and has all the functions of imaging, restoring, and cloning, and it does not have to be installed on the computer.

 

[bruceb]

Would I be able to use the IDE to USB adapter
to clone direct from the old drive to the new one
using either Acronis 11 or Ghost 2003 ? ? ?
I know I can download a 15 day trial of Acronis
and I have Ghost.

 

[corkyg]

That will work AFIK. But, you can't prepare theTI Rescue Media with the trial version. I can't speak for Norton Ghost 2003 - never used it.

 

[dunkster]

Acronis TI10 provides cloning, changing partition sizes for the new drive and setting new drive active - TI11 should do the same. Acronis uses Linux CDor DVD.

Manufacturers HD utilities (I've used WD and Maxtor utilities) provide exactly the same features. These utilities used DOS versions.

Cloning speeds equal.

Never a failure.

Hope this helps!