HD cloning software wanted

ntl customer · 13-03-2006, 14:12

I'm after some software that'll clone my old HD to my new one, so that I can do whatever I need to recover it without making changes to the original on the other drive.

In a nutshell - to copy the hard drive EXACTLY in situ to the new one.

All software solutions I've found are either crippled in some way, or require you to fork out money, which I don't want to, since it's already costing me quite a bit for a replacement disk. It's driving me up the wall!

Can anyone recommend some free solutions for doing this - it needs to run from a bootable CD, since Windows is corrupted on the other machine.

ADMIN EDIT (Russ) - I'm sure you know why I removed that last line.

Graham M · 13-03-2006, 14:14

Can you not just plug the HDD with the Corrupted Windows install into your working PC to recover the files?

ntl customer · 13-03-2006, 14:17

The only problem. The old PC is, well, old and has no SATA slots.

Plus, the file system on the HD in question (the "busted" one) has some problems with it and not all the files are accessible. I'm going to run a "chkdsk" on it to see what happens, but I want to clone the disk to the new drive so that if anything does go tits-up (as with experience from last time when I did do a "chkdsk" on what appeared to be a dodgy drive), it chucked all the data it found into a found.000 folder and munged up the names.

Graham M · 13-03-2006, 14:20

But your new PC should have standard IDE slots as well?

ntl customer · 13-03-2006, 14:22

Yes it does, but the drive which is "busted" is an SATA one. Hence the problem of me not being able to use it in the old computer.

Aragorn · 13-03-2006, 14:23

How about this free one? (linked from Wiki disk cloning page) Note - section 4.4 taks about local disk copy.

Ramrod · 13-03-2006, 14:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aragorn

How about this free one?

Bluddy hell! That looks a bit technical

ntl customer · 13-03-2006, 14:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ramrod

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aragorn

How about this free one?

Bluddy hell! That looks a bit technical

You're not wrong there!

So, if I wanted to copy my old disk to the new one, I'd type at the command line - copydisk wd0 wd1

And that'd do a 1:1 copy of the disk?

13-03-2006, 14:35

I don't know if this is worth a look, it seems to be like xcopy on steroids.

http://navasgrp.home.att.net/tech/clone_copy.htm

- it will copy a disk but doesn't touch the boot sector, so that has to be done seperately with fdisk.

Aragorn · 13-03-2006, 14:37

Looks that way - not tried it myself yet, but certainly would do if I was going to clone my disk (something I should get around to while it still works!)

13-03-2006, 14:44

I would just use norton ghost not free not expensive but works a treat used it for an age

pedantic · 13-03-2006, 14:49

You can also use True Image from Acronis, Amazon sell version 8 for a tenner

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...213812-8382211

ntl customer · 13-03-2006, 15:45

I'm currently acquiring a copy of Norton Ghost as I write so I'll try that first, since from a quick leaf through the docs on the website it appears to be quite easy to use, and reasonably foolproof.

If Ghost requires a floppy bootdisk, then I'll try G4U and see what happens. It's the dipping into the unknown that somewhat scares me, that's all.

Ramrod · 13-03-2006, 16:16

Unfortunatly for me, neither ghost or true image work on 64bit xp

Graham M · 13-03-2006, 16:16

If you're reasonably good with Linux then there are a few ways using a Live Distro too