Imaging Windows Vista 64-bit

[Shimmishim]

So I made the mistake of installing vista 64 ultimate onto a 20GB partition.

I was thinking about imaging or ghosting this partition onto a larger one (50GB).

What is the best software (hopefully free) to do this as well as instructions to do so?

I'm not so software savvy as I am hardware savvy.

Thanks!

 

[George P Burdell]

Acronis True Image is your friend. It can clone a drive (or partition) onto another.

 

[Pabster]

Use the built-in Vista CompletePC Backup. It's right there, no need to purchase or hunt for anything else.

 

[Billb2]

Wouldn't it be easier to use a partition manager to resize your partotions instead of glosting the whole thing?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Just use the built in backup like pabster said. It backs up only USED data, not unused space, so it doesn't care how big the new partition you're moving to is.

 

[mc866]

If you have free space on another partition on the same disk you could just use partition magic or acronis disc director to extend the partition of your c: drive to the size of you liking. This way you wouldn't need to clone, otherwise use acronis true image to clone from the 20gig to the 50gig.

 

[Boztech]

I use gparted for extending partitions. Make sure you defrag first, it will speed things up.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

 

[Ryland]

I also used gparted for resizing my partitions for Vista64.

 

[VulcanX]

You people arent answering the question at hand, the question was how to IMAGE the Vista, Acronis Snap Deploy 3 works as far as i know, i tried with 2 and it didnt work (doesnt support it i dont think)
So yeah

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: VulcanX
You people arent answering the question at hand, the question was how to IMAGE the Vista, Acronis Snap Deploy 3 works as far as i know, i tried with 2 and it didnt work (doesnt support it i dont think)
So yeah

It's been answered, use Vista's built in image backup system.

Acronis can be very picky when it comes to newer hardware, not to mention you have to buy it.

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: VulcanX
You people arent answering the question at hand, the question was how to IMAGE the Vista, Acronis Snap Deploy 3 works as far as i know, i tried with 2 and it didnt work (doesnt support it i dont think)
So yeah

Ah but they have A.)The original question is vague because it implies that its a partition issue and he won't be Switching drives which make some users wonder if partition coping will work or if its even nessisary when there are some many partition resizing apps out there. B.) First two posts mentioned two reasonable Imaging solutions. The built in Vista one (similiar to the Home Server one) and Acronis true image (Home or workstation have worked great for me).

Acronis can be very picky when it comes to newer hardware, not to mention you have to buy it.

Almost every time this is an issue booting to "safe mode" version works. Its because the Safe Mode version is a more generic system where the "full version" is a mini linux load that tries to load specific controller drivers.