Cloning a HDD

JohnnieM

Can anyone advise me on what would be the best software to make an image of a HDD .. When googling I see a lot or different types for cloning or ghosting so many its confusing , I dont want to get anything that full of malware or spyware etc etc... could some one reccomend something that they have used and had no issues with..
For the record I need to get a new (larger) HDD for laptop as its full to the brim:eek: make an image of the hdd etc etc ..happy days hopefully.

Thanks in advance
J

Sherifu

Last time I used Acronis True Image but it's not free.

Ghost Train

ghost is good

but is also not free

ultimate boot cd has some tools on it for cloning, havn't used them though

Beelzebub

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

It's a version of Acronis True Image.


105MB download, there's a comprehensive manual there as well.

I don't know how well this works or if it works with discs other than Seagate or Maxtor. Yip - only works with Maxtor or Seagate drives.

Caveat: Back up your important data to DVD or other medium before you do anything else.

JohnnieM

Thanks for the replies .. Think I'll run with Acronis True image at €49.99 it wont break the bank ..

JM

bandit197

This is free but i havnt used it http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

unnameduser

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

free

JohnnieM

unnameduser wrote: »

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

free

That sure looks impressive.. have you used it? and did you successfully restore from it if so?

unnameduser

JohnnieM wrote: »

That sure looks impressive.. have you used it? and did you successfully restore from it if so?

used it once just to test it. Worked a treat.

gman2k

JohnnieM,
was gonna try and change the hd in my own laptop using acronis or something similar, any tips or hints would be appreciated!

sebastianlieken

i was gonna post a question like this aswell. Im off to germany for 8 months n decided id give my pc to my mum for that time (its a huluva lot faster than hers) I have Vista ultimate on her pc. If i go to backup and restore centre, and backup computer onto an external Hdd, can I load that backup onto a fresh vista instalation on my pc? will it copy everything over like outlook email contacts, past emails, office 07, etc?

MarkR

I just had a look at drive snapshot and it seems to be a 30 day trial?

mathias

I just got that seagate version of acronis with an external drive , this one ,

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=333094

I took an image of my Vista install over the esata port , good lord but was it fast or what ! Ive never an image done that quickly.

MarkR

Just tried something called clonezilla. Worked amazingly well. Boot from a live cd you create, it scans your entire hdd and saves the image onto external drive. I wiped the existing hdd and loaded it up again from the image. Took five minutes to reload after a comlete wipe. All applicatins etc restored. I'll be using it for server deployment and personal backups.

gman2k

So could I buy a new hdd for the laptop, back up my existing hdd to the new hdd (using acronis or clonezilla or sim), then swap over the drives and crank up the machine with the new drive in the laptop?
Is it as 'easy' as that? current 60gb hdd in the laptop just doesn't cut the mustard anymore , what with music, videos photos etc...

thekooman

gman2k wrote: »

So could I buy a new hdd for the laptop, back up my existing hdd to the new hdd (using acronis or clonezilla or sim), then swap over the drives and crank up the machine with the new drive in the laptop?
Is it as 'easy' as that? current 60gb hdd in the laptop just doesn't cut the mustard anymore , what with music, videos photos etc...

i did this with my 5 yr old laptop and it worked perfectly. moved from a 30GB drive to a 100GB one and the machine is working brilliant. everything is as it was.
bought an external HDD enclosure for the 30GB drive as well http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=339051
oh, and i used Acronis and put the image on an ipod. if i remember correctly i had to install a temp OS first so as to get the other partition up and working.

JohnnieM

MarkR wrote: »

Just tried something called clonezilla. Worked amazingly well. Boot from a live cd you create, it scans your entire hdd and saves the image onto external drive. I wiped the existing hdd and loaded it up again from the image. Took five minutes to reload after a comlete wipe. All applicatins etc restored. I'll be using it for server deployment and personal backups.

Hi Mark,
That Clonezilla look like it'll do the trick all right... Did you have any difficulties with the procedure.. Did you find it had any limitations?
I.e. How easy was it?:D

KeRbDoG

If yea have any experience of using Linux you could do a "DD" copy of the partition yea wanted to copy to another HDD. Its a command line tool that if you use a flag, then bye bye data from original HDD

MarkR

JohnnieM wrote: »

Hi Mark,
That Clonezilla look like it'll do the trick all right... Did you have any difficulties with the procedure.. Did you find it had any limitations?
I.e. How easy was it?:D

It was very easy. Here are the steps as I remember..

• Download image from website and burn iso to cd
• Put cd in drive and boot from it
• Choose first option to go into clonezilla. Think you had to choose between English and Chinese. Your choice.
• Next choose drive you will store your drive image on. It detected my external usb drive no bother.
• Gives you various backup options varying between size and speed. Just use the defaults

Tbh it's hard to see where you can go wrong. Just read all the screens as you go through, but it's not hard. I had copied, formatted, and reinstalled drive in less then 30 minutes.

Once I did that I deleted the partition to make sure it was actually doing something.

To restore you just boot from the same cd again and choose the option to restore. Even detected the image I created.

The download site has clear instructions as well. As you're booting from a cd, it doesn't care what operating system is on the drive.

JohnnieM

MarkR wrote: »

choose between English and Chinese.

Cheers Mark...I'll run with that and English:D