Cloning HDD to HDD... partition?

[Charlie98]

I want to clone my current desktop's 80GB HDD to an identical HDD (for instant backup situation do I need to partition the drive first, leave it raw or what to clone it? I'll probably be using Acronis' utility.

We are talking XP SP3, here.

 

[corkyg]

If you use the Acronis utility for cloning, you need not partition or even format. It will do all of that automagically. For best results and best GUI, boot with the Acronis prepared Rescue Media as opposed to doing it from within Windows. That, frankly, sucks. It has to reboot to command prompt anyway and the GUI is yucky.

 

[Charlie98]

Worked like a charm!

I did make a rescue disk as you suggested, but I never used it... they may have new and improved it... It rebooted and cloned happily away from Windows.