Clone Hard drive

Lu Tze

Howdy,

I want to replace my OS drive with different drive, and was wondering if there was any free hard drive cloning software that anybody recommends?

Also, is it just a case of clone it, and put in the new one and everything works?

The other question i have is there any issue with cloning it to a smaller hard drive?

Bob_Harris

You can use the disk copy wizard on this free partitioning software:

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

marco_polo

I use Drive Image XML for this sort of thisng. Horrible interface, so not much style, but plenty of substance.

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

Lu Tze

Thanks for the recommendations guys.

Have ye had any bother doing this?

Does it matter that i am cloning to a smaller hard drive?

kierank01

the gparted live cd is a good open source partition editor.

just stick the 2 drives into the machine, boot from the CD, and it is not much more than a copy and paste job from there.

BaconZombie

CloneZilla & GParted FTW.


http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/liveusb.php

Lu Tze

Cheers guys, spoilt for choice now

Any idea as to whether it matters that i am cloning to a smaller hard drive?

Bob_Harris

Lu Tze wrote: »

Cheers guys, spoilt for choice now

Any idea as to whether it matters that i am cloning to a smaller hard drive?

As long as your smaller drive is greater in size than the amount of space taken on the larger hard drive then it will be fine as long as you do a file by file copy opposed to a sector by sector copy.

kierank01

Lu Tze wrote: »

Cheers guys, spoilt for choice now

Any idea as to whether it matters that i am cloning to a smaller hard drive?

As Bob_Harris said, if the new hd has enough room for the data, then all you will need to do is to resize the original partition, so that is smaller than the new HD, then copy the partition to the new drive, and resize it again so that it is taking up the full of the hew hd, if that is what you want.

Lu Tze

Cheers guys, i have Vista on a seperate partition anyway, so i'll just erase the other partition on the disk, and then copy it. Thanks a million guys

davmigil

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Bob_Harris

Lu Tze wrote: »

Cheers guys, i have Vista on a seperate partition anyway, so i'll just erase the other partition on the disk, and then copy it. Thanks a million guys

Make sure, whatever software you are using, that the boot sector is also copied to the new hard drive. Without the boot sector your operating system will be unable to start.

Rebel021

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/transfer-data-directly-from-one-hard-drive-to-another/

Nice freeware copies raw image and very effective from faulty hdd's

marco_polo

Lu Tze wrote: »

Thanks for the recommendations guys.

Have ye had any bother doing this?

Does it matter that i am cloning to a smaller hard drive?

No trouble at all for me, replaced a 250GB seagate with a 500 Samsung F3. Simply a raw image clone and replace booted up first time no problem , very slightly trickier going to the the smaller drive as the lads above pointed out but resizing partitions is not difficult at all.

Lu Tze

Thanks for your help guys, i will report back as to whther or not i have borked my machine doing this


As reward, witness the new sport taking ireland by storm!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4icyCE0aPf8

Standard Toaster

marco_polo wrote: »

I use Drive Image XML for this sort of thisng. Horrible interface, so not much style, but plenty of substance.

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

Aggreed. Assuming yuor running Windows this is the way forward.
You will need to format the destination Harddrive first though.

dogpile

Maxblaster http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

cloned about 3 HD's using this and never any problems, the whole process takes less than 10 mins....


I was so happy with it I went and bought the company :cool: