Recommend me disk cloning software

[Rua]

Any recommendations on disk cloning software, other than Ghost? I am looking for something that will let me image my XP drive from the OS while it's running. I am looking at Acronis True Image, or possibly Paragon, but I have no experience with anything other than Ghost.

Suggestions?

 

[Gooberlx2]

You could try DriveImage XML.

 

[loup garou]

Every variant of TI I've used has been fantastic.

 

[Rua]

Do you have any experience with DriveImage XML? I see that it's free, so if it works well I'll give that a try.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: Rua
Do you have any experience with DriveImage XML? I see that it's free, so if it works well I'll give that a try.

I used it on XP and it worked fine. Make a BartPE disc (Windows Live CD) as it contains DiXML by default. Useful to restore images in case of system failure. On Vista it requires UAC to be turned off, so I haven't used it on my most recent system.

However, you'll of course get better support with pay products like TI. I also used Acronis TrueImage 9 on XP, which worked perfectly well.

 

[corkyg]

For Vista, TI-11 is required. I have used TI steadily since ver. 6. Before that I used PQ's DriveImage and DriveCopy. I am more interested in drive replication/cloning rather than backup/restore.

 

[Rua]

Thanks for the suggestions. Good call on the Windows Live CD, I hadn't thought of that. I just want to be able to restore my current Windows install on a fresh hdd if my current one happens to die. Way too much crap to reinstall! Sounds like this should do what I need, and not cost me anything in the process.

Thanks again!

 

[dunkster]

Every drive manufacturer offers free utility software to clone drives, including option to resize partitions during the clone.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: dunkster
Every drive manufacturer offers free utility software to clone drives, including option to resize partitions during the clone.

I haven't used any of those utilites in a long time. From what I remember though, they only really allowed you to transfer drive data from one drive to another. No way to really archive a drive image file. For example, DiXML has an XML file which points to the location of every bit of data, and then the data is archived into .DAT files. IIRC, Acronis stores image files in a .TIB file (or something like that).

 

[Lorne]

Dunkster got it down before I did,,,,
Goober, I have a CD with the drive MFG software on them and use them often.

these softwares are 10 fold easyer then Ghost and faster.
The only problem Ive come across so far is Norton (Who makes Ghost btw) Just turn it off compleatly or just uninstall it and save copytime and reinstall it later.

Also If this is a networked system with a domain or shared areas you may have to disconnect and or dismounted.

The drive MFG software coping works excellent and compleat, It gets it all and you end up with a rdy to boot and defragged HD, I have made back up HD's to set aside, moved from and to raid systems ( Going to raid takes a little more sometimes), Backed raid 0 system onto a single drive, then replaced the raid drives with bigger HD's and recopied the data from the single back to the raid 0.
Also if you have a failing non raid drive that your afraid that coping data will corrupt it, Youcan use another system and put the MFG sofware on and ad the old and new drive to it (CD drive removel most likely) and image it across thatway to.

This also makes a good back up software, I have an old HD case that is just larger then the total data on my boot drive in a USB case that I back to everynow and then.
All I have to do if my main goes out is put the the dive into my system and boot up, Ill get a new one when I can and copiy to the newone and pop the old one back into the case. So easy.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Originally posted by: Lorne
Dunkster got it down before I did,,,,
Goober, I have a CD with the drive MFG software on them and use them often.

these softwares are 10 fold easyer then Ghost and faster.
The only problem Ive come across so far is Norton (Who makes Ghost btw) Just turn it off compleatly or just uninstall it and save copytime and reinstall it later.

Also If this is a networked system with a domain or shared areas you may have to disconnect and or dismounted.

The drive MFG software coping works excellent and compleat, It gets it all and you end up with a rdy to boot and defragged HD, I have made back up HD's to set aside, moved from and to raid systems ( Going to raid takes a little more sometimes), Backed raid 0 system onto a single drive, then replaced the raid drives with bigger HD's and recopied the data from the single back to the raid 0.
Also if you have a failing non raid drive that your afraid that coping data will corrupt it, Youcan use another system and put the MFG sofware on and ad the old and new drive to it (CD drive removel most likely) and image it across thatway to.

This also makes a good back up software, I have an old HD case that is just larger then the total data on my boot drive in a USB case that I back to everynow and then.
All I have to do if my main goes out is put the the dive into my system and boot up, Ill get a new one when I can and copiy to the newone and pop the old one back into the case. So easy.

Yeah, HDD mfg software is probably the easiest route to go for strictly HDD cloning. What I like about HDD imaging software, though, are the options for compression and backup destinations. I can often backup to a lot less space and burn to a set of DVDs, or store the image on the same HDD as other backups.

For example, I have my brother-in-laws boot drive stored to a set of DVDs in case he fubars his system. I have my own system's image stored to a backup HDD, which is also large enough to additionally contain synced folders of all my music, video, and pictures (since I don't store all that on my boot drive).