Cloning a Drive

[markjen]

Are there some low-cost/free options for copying all the data (including
system files) from one hard disk to another? I'm building a A7N8X system
and my SATA drive went kaput and is being RMA'd. So I rebuilt the system on
a small IDE drive, but rather than install everything from scratch when I
get the new SATA drive back, I'd prefer just to clone everything from the
IDE drive over to the SATA drive. I've heard of Ghost, but I don't want to
spend $70 for something I'll use once.

Thanks,

- Mark

 

[Ed Jay]

Are there some low-cost/free options for copying all the data (including
system files) from one hard disk to another? I'm building a A7N8X system
and my SATA drive went kaput and is being RMA'd. So I rebuilt the system on
a small IDE drive, but rather than install everything from scratch when I
get the new SATA drive back, I'd prefer just to clone everything from the
IDE drive over to the SATA drive. I've heard of Ghost, but I don't want to
spend $70 for something I'll use once.

Get the shareware version. ;-)

Ed Jay (No M to reply)

 

[John Tindle]

Check out XXCOPY at www.xxcopy.com
It will copy everything from one drive to another including XP system files.
Threre's a free version that will do what you want.

JT

 

[BoB]

It didn't used to clone XP installations?????????

 

[Ed Jay]

It didn't used to clone XP installations?????????

I does now. I did one yesterday.

Ed

 

[markjen]

Check out XXCOPY at www.xxcopy.com

It will copy everything from one drive to another including XP system files.
Threre's a free version that will do what you want.

Yep, looks good, thanks for the tip.

- Mark

 

[BoB]

Please elaborate, last year he didn't intend to
integrate volume shadow copy to create bootable cloning of nt
partitions. When I visited his site today I found no mention of it,
just for win9x.

 

[Jens Baumann]

BoB wrote:

[Ghost Trialware]

Please elaborate, last year he didn't intend to
integrate volume shadow copy to create bootable cloning of nt
partitions. When I visited his site today I found no mention of it,
just for win9x.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...f&view=pfdocs&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=

You do not need "volume shadow" or anything like that. Just create
bootable floppy disks.

 

[BoB]

XXcopy runs within the windows shell, of course Ghost uses DOS!
DOS is slow as molasses!

BoB wrote:

[Ghost Trialware]

Please elaborate, last year he didn't intend to
integrate volume shadow copy to create bootable cloning of nt
partitions. When I visited his site today I found no mention of it,
just for win9x.

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...f&view=pfdocs&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=

You do not need "volume shadow" or anything like that. Just create
bootable floppy disks.

 

[mrdancer]

DOS is slow as molasses!

But at least it works!!

 

[Philip Callan]

But at least it works!!

I miss Novell DOS 7 ;(

 

[Ed]

But at least it works!!

On my old KT133A boards I have dual boot setups (Win98 or Me / WinXP Pro
) and run Ghost from Win98/Me and backup the WinXP partition from there,
it's a whole lot faster then Ghost in DOS on those boards!

Cheers,
Ed

 

[Nitrof]

That is why I always recommend Drive Image, especially the latest
one - which will save HD image from Windows.
To restore the image to disk, one has to boot from the
CD - which loads NT system files.

Operations can be scheduled.

It is fast.

A more complex version (I do not remember how it is
called) will even make periodical incremental images.


========

 

[Ed]

That is why I always recommend Drive Image, especially the latest
one - which will save HD image from Windows.

Since what version? , think the last version I had was 4.0.
Ed

 

[Nitrof]

Drive Image 7.

or even better

PowerQuest V21 Protector

 

[Mark Timerding]

That is why I always recommend Drive Image.......
It is fast.

Yeah, very fast indeed ... when making an image. Also pretty
fast when restoring one ... AFTER it booted from the CD ... (which
is a pretty slow and painful bootup)

 

[Jens Baumann]

XXcopy runs within the windows shell, of course Ghost uses DOS!
DOS is slow as molasses!

I never trust an application which creates an image of the installation
it is RUNNING on at the time. If you boot to DOS and fire up Ghost from
there, you have at least the guarantee that no file is somehow locked /
in use / modified while being copied etc. And you don't have to install
anything, which is a huge plus when you want to create a clean
installation image.

 

[mrdancer]

I never trust an application which creates an image of the installation
it is RUNNING on at the time. If you boot to DOS and fire up Ghost from
there, you have at least the guarantee that no file is somehow locked /
in use / modified while being copied etc. And you don't have to install
anything, which is a huge plus when you want to create a clean
installation image.

I've used xxcopy to clone several drives, and in each case the result was
perfect. You run the clone twice to make sure everything was cloned
correctly (in each case, it was). The second running of the clone only
takes a few seconds.