need free HD cloning Utility

[Ghionw]

Hey, I am looking for a free software utility to make a exact replica of my current HD onto another HD. I want to pretty much clone my current IDE HD onto a new SATA HD. Do I need to make both partitions the same size?
Usually I would just do a clean install but I can't be bothered to load all my software again and some of them I know I can't find. So any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.....

[RZA]

Hey, I am looking for a free software utility to make a exact replica of my current HD onto another HD. I want to pretty much clone my current IDE HD onto a new SATA HD. Do I need to make both partitions the same size?
Usually I would just do a clean install but I can't be bothered to load all my software again and some of them I know I can't find. So any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated.....

There are a quite a few programs that work well for this but i cant think of any free ones now. In terms of partioning, you dont have to make a partition as long as the drive your copying to is larger of of equal size as the drive being copied from then your safe. Below are good programs which can be used

Norton Ghost
Acronis True Image

[BUBBA]

I Second norton ghost

[Ghionw]

respect for the suggestions.... I really looking for a free utility as I don't foresee doing something like this too often or again for that matter. I will continue my search....

[RZA]

A quick google search found this

http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilit...andimage.shtml

It lists lots of backup utilities but i haven't tried any of them so i cant comment on usage or effectiveness. I hope this helps

[Ghionw]

Respect RZA. I will read on those mentioned in that link and try to find some others.....

[Nestersan]

Gparted Live CD: FREE

http://gparted.sourceforge.net

a) Booting off the livecd, GParted shows the harddrive contains a NTFS partition we want to copy (/dev/hda). We want to copy the ntfs partition to the second harddrive : /dev/hdb.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/move/move.htm

[Nestersan]

pt2.











ATTENTION PLEASE ! DON'T REBOOT RIGHT NOW !!! If you do this, it will be a big crash! Actually you have the same windows XP on both hard drive. From the second hard drive, XP cant boot, because there is no MBR for the moment ! But if you try to reboot, the first hard drive will run XP and seeing the second XP on the second hard drive, it will be a kind of disaster ! Windows cant bear windows ! So, just unplug both hard drive, and plug the new one as master, leaving the other one for the moment.

[lovepython]

Yea i used norton ghost and true image and they are both very good. i kinda have a preference for true image because i have it on a utility cd that i boot from so there is no need to be installing and worrying about registration.

Usually I would just do a clean install but I can't be bothered to load all my software again and some of them I know I can't find.

is this current installation stable? if not it wudnt make any sence imaging that partition because it wud be running exactly as it is now on the new harddrive. i wud recommend imaging ur drive after a fresh install of OS and software so everytime u revert to the clone state u revert to a stable install.

Nester that cd seems like a very good tool to have. am gonna download it now.

[Nestersan]

I used it Sat. for first time to resize a partition fro a Vista Install.

****in' impressive....
Added to my util cdcase right then and there.