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What is the best way to backup/clone OS on another drive for quick replacement?

H

hackmole

Senior member
My startup drive is 40 gigs. On this drive I only have Windows XP installed though of course all the programs have things installed in the Windows registry.
I have two other drives on my computer that are mirrored to each other. But now I want to make a clone of that 40 gig drive in case it ever breaks down so I don' t have to spend two weeks reinstalling the 100 or so programs I have installed. All my programs are installed on the mirrored drives but I know that important things from the installation go into the registry on my startup drive.
I have got an extra 60 gig drive. What would be the best way to make a copy of my startup drive to this 60 gig drive so that if my 40 gig startup drive ever breaks down, I can quickly replace it with the 60 gig drive and not miss a beat?
 
If you want a free solution, you can use Clonezilla. You can either first make an image file of the boot drive and store it wherever, and then restore that image to the 60 GB drive. Or, you can make a direct clone of the 40 GB drive to the 60 GB drive(not sure about the auto-resizing features in Clonezilla).

Acronis has a liveCD too that is a bit simpler, but you have to pay for it.
 
A clone software named aomei backupper and it is my favourite. Now I recommend it to you. It is free.
Have you ever used any clone software before? If you haven't, read the instruction first.
Be careful.
 
I now use the pro version of this (after having tried many apps), but they also have a free edition I tried first:

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html#free

I now would not be without it. I do internal backup in my desktops (install a second HDD), and once a week, I clone the drive I always boot into, to my backup drive. It takes very little time and works perfectly. u can make both drives bootable by using Easy BCD which is free.

Only thing you must be careful about, and this app helps you focus on this, is choosing the SOURCE DRIVE (the drive whose entire contents you wish to copy TO the second drive), and the TARGET drive (the drive you are copying to)

For volumes the size of yours, this whole thing will take only minutes.
 
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Ghost32, despite its age is still great for this as well. As it doesn't require two steps to use the full 60gb drive. I still use it all the time to transfer HDDs to smaller SSDs. But it works the other way too.
 
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