What is the best imaging software for making a _bootable_ copy of my HD? ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at
Seagate Disk Wizard ahs always worked for me. It does require you to have at least 1 Seagate drive in the machine for it to work though. Avail at their website. Art
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
Clonezilla. Its free open source. Not that hard to use. Not sure by what you mean by _bootable_copy. Clonezilla will make an image of your HD to a, say a USB HD, and restore it back to a HD of equal or larger size.
Cheers
I've always had good luck with Acronis products. Reasonably priced.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
Here's a version of dd for Windows.
-- Les Cargill
+1
... and eliminates the need to restart windows on the original drive (i.e., imagine if that system was corrupted to the point where *executing* it is either not possible or likely to corrupt more data on the drive!)
I've never understood this limitation! partclone has the (risky) option of restoring to a smaller size -- though there is no way to pass options to it directly from clonezilla's "shell".
IMO, this needlessly can screw you if, for example, your
1TB old drive was 2 cylinders larger than the 1TB *new* drive that you replace it with!As I use CZ regularly, I need to look through the scripts to see where it is taking this decision away from me!
Clonezilla also handles the partition data correctly vs. Ghost. I restored a Ghosted drive to a larger drive and partition magic complained about the partition table and would not resize the partition. Clonezilla, fixed up the partition correctly.
Cheers
Never played with Ghost (I don't trust Symantec's products; they seem to act as if they know more than they really *do* about undocumented parts of the system, etc.).
I've been VERY happy with CZ, though -- with the exception of this "downsizing" issue. I routinely use it to image disks on each system as I build the system. Then, to restore the system to a particular state some time down the road.
I figure exploring the downsizing option and then submitting some diff's to the developers is a good form of "payback" for the utility it has afforded me!
Ghost PE.
Which operating system? It matters a lot!
I want to preserve my XP OS and all my program and hardware installs.
(Onto a larger HD :)
...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
There are a bunch of issues. If you're just changing the hard drive, you shouldn't run afoul of XP copy protection/activation.
I like Acronis. Most hard drive vendors have a free crippled version that works only with their drives. Unfortunately, the clone feature is the one most defeated.
I use the WD version and have a WD USB drive that satisfies the requirement to have a WD drive in the system. Version 13 still has clone enabled.
Backup each partition to some offline media. Build the recovery CD. Change the drive, format/partition it using the xp install disk or a live partition manager. Boot the recovery CD. Acronis can restore a partition to any partition that's big enough to hold it. In the rare instance that it won't boot, run the XP install disk and run fixmbr and fixboot. This works with IDE to IDE transfer. I've not been able to restore an IDE backup to a SATA drive. For that, you need the clone function.
Once you get C booted, you can mount the backups and mix/match manual copy to any of the partitions...or restore whole partitions.
If you're using a new drive, you can save the old one and reduce your risk of issues to zero.
If you're building a new system, make the C partition as small as possible. Then Acronis can backup C to D. Makes it small, fast and so convenient that you'll be tempted to do it often.
Win7 has other issues, but workarounds exist.
"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
It will work for you. You will still have the original HD intact if it fails to transfer. I transferred a Linux box from a 6G to a 80G disk with out any issues. It will handle any OS.
Cheers
Note that the *hardware* might not support the disk in question! E.g., the 137GB SNAFU (if the hardware is as old as he claims)
I see about 1GB/min using an external USB drive for the imagestore. No doubt faster if you can hang the imagestore off an *internal* interface!
my
Not that much. Sustained read is limited by rotational speed, you can't read or write any faster than the sectors come under the head. About 50 MB/s for current drives, less for older drives.
?-)
Hmm. i haven't tried clonezila with HFS+ filesystems (Mac).
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.