Need to copy one Hard Drive to another...

[trexmgd]

Anyone know of a quick and easy way to mirror one HD to another? My friend wants to replace his old HD with a new, larger one. He's running Win XP and its NTFS format. Keep in mind this isn't for data back up, but rather full replacement so it needs the full boot sector etc., not just programs.

Also of concern is that I'd like the new HD to have only one partion (leave him with a single C: drive) and my experience with Partition Magic (looong time ago) made me create a partition the size of the original and a second that was the remainder of the new HD's space. So if I replace his 10GB HD with a 60GB HD, I'd like it to be one 60GB HD with 50GB of space left, not a 10GB C: partition that is full and a 50GB D: partition that is empty. Make sense?

I've seen several sites saying to get Norton Ghost or Partition Magic... I was hoping to find some freeware, but if not, I'll check out your suggestions.

 

[Bobthelost]

Why would you want to buy a 60Gig HD? Is this a laptop?

http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/system/fwbackup.html

Is freeware, but the easiest way is norton ghost.

 

[Green Man]

I'm quite sure that all retail drives come with a utility to copy the old HDD to the new.
Though I usually buy OEM and use Ghost, I can recall a utility from Maxtor to do this.

I connected both HDDs to the system and booted to a floppy. Then I just followed on screen prompts to clone the drive.

 

[trexmgd]

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Why would you want to buy a 60Gig HD? Is this a laptop?

LOL, I understand your point and the easy answer is that I have a WD Caviar 60GB that I'm giving him free. I've had a couple sitting around since last year when I upgraded to 2X 160 GB in RAID 0.


Will Ghost be able to overcome the partition situation I was speaking of? I haven't used it, but did use Drive Copy (maaany years ago) and it forced you to make a partition on your new, bigger HD, the size of the original HD.

 

[trexmgd]

Originally posted by: Green Man
I'm quite sure that all retail drives come with a utility to copy the old HDD to the new.
Though I usually buy OEM and use Ghost, I can recall a utility from Maxtor to do this.

I connected both HDDs to the system and booted to a floppy. Then I just followed on screen prompts to clone the drive.

Yeah, I used to use all those (like Max Blast)... but like you, I pretty much only buy OEM, especially HDs, because I don't use the cables & rails etc. that come in the box.

 

[Green Man]

If you buy an OEM drive, you can just download the utility

Maxblast Utility

Seagate DiscWizard

Western Digital Data Lifeguard

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: trexmgd

Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Why would you want to buy a 60Gig HD? Is this a laptop?

LOL, I understand your point and the easy answer is that I have a WD Caviar 60GB that I'm giving him free. I've had a couple sitting around since last year when I upgraded to 2X 160 GB in RAID 0.


Will Ghost be able to overcome the partition situation I was speaking of? I haven't used it, but did use Drive Copy (maaany years ago) and it forced you to make a partition on your new, bigger HD, the size of the original HD.

Don't think so, but i'm not sure.

 

[Old Hippie]

So if I replace his 10GB HD with a 60GB HD, I'd like it to be one 60GB HD with 50GB of space left, not a 10GB C: partition that is full and a 50GB D: partition that is empty. Make sense?

Partition Magic has a "Clone Disk" option that lets you control the size of the partitions on the new disc. I've never used Ghost.

 

[Harvey]

Ghost is the answer. I've done it many times. It's also the best backup system you can use.

At its simplest level, Ghost works from a bootable floppy. For new systems, I always buy drives in pairs and put one in a mobile rack. When I'm through scanning for viruses and spyware, I power down, plug in the second drive and boot to the floppy and clone my drive. Then, I power down and unplug the backup drive. It takes under 10 minutes to clone my entire 80 GB drive. I set up a friend's system with a pair of 120 GB SATA drives, and it's even faster.

I also Ghost immediately before installing any new program in case the installation fails. I can affort to try unusual setups because the worst that can happen is, I lose a few minutes Ghosting back to where things were before I started whatever I'm trying to do.

This is far more secure than restore points because the backup info is on stored the same drive, and some viruses attack it, along with whatever other destruction it does. OTOH, there is no virus that can jump the air gap. If your backup drive isn't plugged into the system, it can't be infected so you're always as good as your last clean Ghost.

Any version of Ghost since 2003 (with updates for that version) also works with USB and Firewire drives so you can use it to backup to an external drive or to backup a laptop.

 

[ShellGuy]

I have always loved Acronis TrueImage for my cloning needs. Works for all my backups as well....



Will G.

 

[Harvey]

I've never used TrueImage because I already have Ghost, but I've heard good things about it.

 

[trexmgd]

Harvey/ShellGuy...

Do you know if either of these products work with a RAID 0 set up? I figure if we're going to buy something for this job, I'd like it to work for me in the future. It would be ideal if I could copy partitions from my RAID 0 to a stand alone HD. Thoughts?

 

[tiap]

Due to marketing wars both Ghost and Trueimage were rushed out in a very unreliable state and as a result have trouble with a lot of the newer raid chips and many other issues. In a few months I'm sure they will be fine but right now just use the free wd datalifeguard tools. Read the instructions on the wd site to make sure your 80gig will be bootable when cloned.

 

[Jhhnn]

The bootable WD utility is a piece of cake to use and will do exactly what you want.

 

[trexmgd]

I want to take a minute and thank everyone here for their help.
Here is asummary of what I found: Acronis will not work on RAID setups. Ghost may work on some RAID setups, but per symantec, isn't supported. WD data lifeguard & Maxblast (same software shell, but each looks for their product) DO work with RAID setups. Also, they now have utlities that run under Windows, making it even easier. Best part of the WD/Max software is that its FREE!!!

Again, thank you to all that helped and ,hopefully, this post will help others in the future.

 

[Auric]

Free FTW! Although, they are significantly slower at cloning than Ghost and not really suitable for backups.

 

[imported_JLP]

I have also been looking for a free cloning solution without using the WD/Maxtor software to move from a PATA 80GB WD-HD to 2 SATA 100GB Maxtor-HD in RAID 0. I stumbled across "DriveImage XML v1.10" from www.runtime.org and I'm going to try that program tonight or this weekend. Has anyone used this program or know if it is worth trying? It is free for home use. I have had Ghost 9.0 for a while without installing but now I've lost my sleeve with the s/n so I'm trying another route. Also I emailed support@runtime.org and they say that this will work for me.
Justin

 

[One43637]

Casper XP

http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/

 

[imported_JLP]

Well it was a success. The free DriveImage XML program worked for me. I'm now booting into my SATA RAID 0 config with my original OS and programs still intact. Took about an hour and a half total.
Justin

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, You got some pretty good suggestions here. Maxtor calls their program MAXBLAST. Most versions work on any make drive. Maxblast has a CLONE program. If you first partition the 60 gig HD as one partition, you will get the new data and sys in a 60 gig partition. Hope this helps answer your questions, Jim

 

[KrillBee]

Question,

Suppose I had a working computer. Could I just put both the old drive and the new drive in that computer, and use windows to copy the data from one drive to the other? Would that work?
(provided I set the partition to be active on the new drive) I suppose you also might have to copy the master boot record too? (I dont know how to do that)

 

[aniruddha23]

I was just about to write the same question.

Will Ghost work for linux installations too?

I have 3 identical servers one of which is fully installed and configured. Would be great if I cna just image the HDD to other systems.

RHEL ES 4.

on second thoughts since the OS is linux how can I utilise ghost? does in have some CD/Floppy based program that can do this on the fly?