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How to clone a HDD?

F

faye

Platinum Member
Hi,

have a 80GB old harddrive, will buy a new 250GB or 300GB harddrive to replace it.
Now the 80GB drive has 4 partitions, in the new harddrive i think i will create 4 or more partitions...

I just connect it to another SATA port, and then what program to use to clone it?
ex. D:, E:, F:, G: are the partition on the old harddrive. I now want to create D, E, F, G and H and I..

how can i clone D, E, F, G onto the new drive's partition..?
what programs could give me an ease to do all i want?

Thanks
 
My choice would be Acronis TrueImage. The latest is version 9, build 3633. Use the program to create a bootable CD. Then boot with that CD and select the FULL program, and choose the CLONE function. It will clone your 80 GB drive and all partitions to your new drive, and each partition will be proportionally the same size as the original in terms of disk space %. For an 80 GB drive, it will be a 10-15 minute operation. When it is done, remove the 80 GB drive and connect your new one as the main drive. It should boot right up.

Also, many HDD OEMs provide free software that will do the same thing, perhaps not as elegantly, but certainly cheaper.

TI can also clone individual partitions in the manual mode. For changing them or adding new ones, use PartitionMagic 8, now from Symantec.
 
So this way am i making DVDs for the backup?

or i make a new image file onto the new drive?
 
No - cloning and imaging are related, but not the same. You can image files on a DVD - but that does not make a bootable OS. That is good for data back up mainly. Cloning is an exact bit by bit duplication of a drive that has every thing in exactly the right place including the MBR etc.

Yes, you can image a file onto the new drive, but that doesn't make it bootable.
 
corkyg,

it is so good that my friend has the Acronis Trueimage handy.

About the making a bootable CD.... i am wondering... the drive that i want to clone is not the OS drive. The drive that has the OS is my other drive(raptor) which doesn't need to be clone... So do i still need to make a bootdisck for it?

Thank you so much for the input
 
I find that cloning is always better with the bootable CD. It totally bypasses any OS, so it never has a sharing violation. The bootable Acronis disk puts you into a very cool Linux variant - excellent GUI.

I always use the MANUAL mode - just don't trust automatic anything. Important to identify what drive is source and what is target. When source and target are different size, use PROPORTIONAL. If the target is cherry, you won't need to select "Delete PArtitions on Target?" If it is not, that is what you do when you are cloning multiple partitions.

Also, TI sees externals, firewire and USB, and handles SATA drives calling them SCSI.
 
corkyg,

i bought the drive today, and finished cloning with ease...
actually, very easy !!! Thank you very much..


However, i can't set the drive space myself, can't i?
 
Originally posted by: faye
corkyg,
i bought the drive today, and finished cloning with ease... actually, very easy !!! Thank you very much..
However, i can't set the drive space myself, can't i?
Click to expand...

If you mean change the partition space allocation, no. For that I would use PartitionMagic 8 now from Symantec. Cloning different drives results in identical spacing or proportional spacing. In either case, that can be reallocated with P/M.

 
Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
Can TI clone a single drive setup to a double drive, hardware RAID?
Click to expand...

If the resulting RAID array is seen as a single drive letter by the system, then yes. One of my drives is RAID 0, and it works for that.

 
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