Duplicating HDD

[Edgar]

My HDD on my desk top is getting full and I want to replace the drive. In the past I would take the drive to work, put it on the duplicator, push the button, and duplicate the drive. I would then use Partition Magic to stretch the partitions to utilize the entire drive. It was a very simple process that worked well and took maybe 15 minutes of my time. The disk duplicator is no longer available so I have to come up with another solution. I have some pointers for some applications that if disrupted would cause a lot of work on my part, hence adding another drive “E” is less desirable than a disk copy. Can anyone recommend a good inexpensive ghost or coping application

[SageRider]

Maxtor and Western Digital both provide free cloning software with their internal hard drives.

[smiller]

If you have Partition Magic I believe that it has a feature to create a drive clone, or at least I think the version I have does.

[Aluminum_Butt]

We use Norton Ghost at work. It's not cheap, but it's rock solid.

 

I've also used a product called Powerquest Drive Image that worked OK. I searched for it to link here, but looks like they may have been bought out. I did see it for sale on Amazon, though.

 

There is a zero cost way if you've got the skills. Put the new drive in and take the old drive out. Install Windows, but install it in a folder called "wintrash" - or anything besides "windows" (or winnt if you're on Windows 2000). Once you've got that up, shut down and put the other drive back in. Copy the contents of the old drive onto the new drive - make sure you've got the settings so you can see all the system and hidden files - it's a good time to go to the command prompt and use xcopy - overwrite everything where there's a duplicate that's not locked. Edit the boot.ini file on the new drive to point to windows instead of wintrash, shutdown, pull the old drive, reboot, kill the wintrash folder, and you're done.

[Aluminum_Butt]

I should add to my post above... when you install Windows, make sure you patch it up to whatever service pack the "old" drive is on.

[hootowl]

I've used this program with good results

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/hdclonefree.html

[Edgar]

I got a Maxtor 500 GB HDD at FRY's today and used the enclosed MaxBlast 5 to ghost the drive, $89. It worked great and now I'm ready to fill it up again. Thanks Michael. And thanks everyone else.

[SageRider]

Powerquest (Drive Image) was bought out by Symantec (Norton Ghost) some years ago. Drive Image was killed at that point.