Cloning a hard drive using freeware?

J

John Latter

Hi,

Is there any freeware (and info) that will enable me to clone a hard
drive?

My existing HDD is starting to fail. Windows hasn't reported any
errors yet but the drive (5400rpm) fails Seagates diagnistics (bad
sectors & stuff). The drive has XP preloaded onto the end of it.

I've got a new Hitachi 7200rpm drive and borrowed a generic windows xp
oem disc which installed ok. SP2 installed ok but after downloading
all relevant updates one instance of svchost.exe continuously accesses
the disc.

I've posted on microsoft newsgroups but haven't had any luck in fixing
whatever the problem might be. Consequently, I'm now thinking of
cloning the original HDD & trusting to luck that there aren't any bad
sectors in the region where XP has been preinstalled.

I'm not very knowledgable about these things so any advice would be
very welcome!

--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 
J

John Latter

B

bambam

Is there any freeware (and info) that will enable me to clone a hard
drive?
Click to expand...

Yes, of course there is. :)
But rather than downloading one drive cloning program, and one drive
partitioning program, and one drive diagnostic program etc, why not
download the "Ultimate Boot CD"?
It has all of these utilities plus many more on a bootable cd. Admittedly
the download is larger (82MB), but it sure is a handy tool.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
 
J

jmatt

I dunno enough to partition

Those words make it harder to find a way that will be easy for you to
use.

This way you slave it to another hard drive / comp ( no need to bolt
it in, just cable it & leave it outside the case ) & copy
your stuff onto the other HD.
You may have a choice of jumper settings on the master HD, such as
master with slave or MS.

Here is a free program & this is what you copy & paste into
the Command Prompt, then hit Enter.
Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt.
XXCOPY C:\ D:\ /CLONE

xxcopy ( freeware ) from ,
http://www.xxcopy.com/

* Posted via http://www.sixfiles.com/forum
* Please report abuse to http://xinbox.com/sixfiles
 
B

Bob Adkins

Hi,

Is there any freeware (and info) that will enable me to clone a hard
drive?
Click to expand...

I have never found a real need to clone an entire HDD. In fact, I recommend
against it for personal use. You tend to copy a lot of unneeded junk and
past mistakes.

All you need to do is to burn your documents, pictures, e-mail addresses,
links, and music to a CD or DVD. All the rest of the software can be
re-installed from CD or downloaded from the web as you did originally.

What with all the Windows bloat and spyware today, you need a fresh install
occasionally anyway. Heavy users benefit from a fresh install ever 6-12
months. Light users a bit longer, but everyone should do an occasional
fresh install.

-- Bob
 
O

Onno Voors

Is there any freeware (and info) that will enable me to clone a hard
drive?
Click to expand...

partition-saving. You will have to boot to DOS first and then launch
savepart.exe. You will also need an additional FAT partition, but with the
new HD you have that should not be a problem.
www.partition-saving.com
 
J

John Corliss

Bob said:
I have never found a real need to clone an entire HDD. In fact, I recommend
against it for personal use. You tend to copy a lot of unneeded junk and
past mistakes.

All you need to do is to burn your documents, pictures, e-mail addresses,
links, and music to a CD or DVD. All the rest of the software can be
re-installed from CD or downloaded from the web as you did originally.

What with all the Windows bloat and spyware today, you need a fresh install
occasionally anyway. Heavy users benefit from a fresh install ever 6-12
months. Light users a bit longer, but everyone should do an occasional
fresh install.
Click to expand...

Absolutely good advice. However, to clone a hard drive, I get excellent
results from XXCopy:

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm

Once one masters the command line parameters (complex simply because the
program has so many options and capabilities), it works flawlessly. At
least for me it does.
 
M

Mel

Is there any freeware (and info) that will enable me to clone a hard
drive?

My existing HDD is starting to fail. Windows hasn't reported any
errors yet but the drive (5400rpm) fails Seagates diagnistics (bad
sectors & stuff). The drive has XP preloaded onto the end of it.

I've got a new Hitachi 7200rpm drive and borrowed a generic windows xp
oem disc which installed ok. SP2 installed ok but after downloading
all relevant updates one instance of svchost.exe continuously accesses
the disc.

I've posted on microsoft newsgroups but haven't had any luck in fixing
whatever the problem might be. Consequently, I'm now thinking of
cloning the original HDD & trusting to luck that there aren't any bad
sectors in the region where XP has been preinstalled.

I'm not very knowledgable about these things so any advice would be
very welcome!
Click to expand...
=========================================================================
DrvClonerXP clones NTFS and FAT32 drive partitions, for the Windows
2K/XP Operating System, by copying, byte-for-byte, the drive's partition
structure to another partition, creating a perfect duplicate, without
creating an intermediate image file (as with DrvImagerXP). The partition
clone is an exact reproduction of the original drive partition. Create
identical bootable partitions! Copy an existing hard drive onto a new
hard drive! Though not as powerful and flexible as "Drive Image" or
"Ghost" drive imaging programs, the simplicity, yet powerful
capabilities of DrvClonerXP make it the favorite choice for many. Click
a button to download (in the background) the latest DrvClonerXP updates
from the Lexun Freeware web site! DrvClonerXP is freeware! Pass it
around! Give it to your friends! Featured on TechTV in Australia! People
are using it all over the world! Also included are tips on using xcopy
for many situations where DrvClonerXP is not an option!

http://www.freeware.org.uk/disk.htm

========================================================================
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Disk Manager
Looking for Disk Manager? Disk Manager is no longer available for
download on our site, because systems with Windows XP and 2000 don't
require it. Regardless whether you use Windows 9.x or the latest version
of Windows, our simple installation guide will take you through the
installation steps, and our partitioning and formatting guide covers all
the details you need to know for installing our drive on Windows
operating systems.

Please follow the advice in these guides. If you need additional help or
have questions, feel free to contact our support center.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/4DD4DCCA11DE5EB186256D6A0061C8A8
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/E6F6028A3A58BEA286256D6A0060452D

========================================================================
Doing without learning what to do and how to do it can only result in
disaster. With your current level of experience your learning curve will
be steep, so get all the information you can about the task ahead of
you, and learn all that you can from the information you obtained, for a
successful transition from one hard disk to another.

========================================================================
You may also get additional information and utilities from the website
of your orginal hard disk manufacturer. (ie: Seagate, Maxtor, Western
Digital)

========================================================================
 
J

John Latter

Yes, of course there is. :)
But rather than downloading one drive cloning program, and one drive
partitioning program, and one drive diagnostic program etc, why not
download the "Ultimate Boot CD"?
It has all of these utilities plus many more on a bootable cd. Admittedly
the download is larger (82MB), but it sure is a handy tool.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/
Click to expand...

Thanks Bambam - I'll have a look!
--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 
J

John Latter

Those words make it harder to find a way that will be easy for you to
use.

This way you slave it to another hard drive / comp ( no need to bolt
it in, just cable it & leave it outside the case ) & copy
your stuff onto the other HD.
You may have a choice of jumper settings on the master HD, such as
master with slave or MS.

Here is a free program & this is what you copy & paste into
the Command Prompt, then hit Enter.
Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt.
XXCOPY C:\ D:\ /CLONE

xxcopy ( freeware ) from ,
http://www.xxcopy.com/

* Posted via http://www.sixfiles.com/forum
* Please report abuse to http://xinbox.com/sixfiles
Click to expand...

Thanks jmatt!

At the moment my D drive is connected to my DVDRom but I have a slave
position on the C cable going to the original hard drive - which do I
use? (please!)

Also, is it possible to just clone part of a disk? I'm only interested
in the area where my copy of XP Home is supposed to be. Er, do I need
to format the new drive forst?

Thats all for now..

Jorolat :)

--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 
J

John Latter

I have never found a real need to clone an entire HDD. In fact, I recommend
against it for personal use. You tend to copy a lot of unneeded junk and
past mistakes.

All you need to do is to burn your documents, pictures, e-mail addresses,
links, and music to a CD or DVD. All the rest of the software can be
re-installed from CD or downloaded from the web as you did originally.

What with all the Windows bloat and spyware today, you need a fresh install
occasionally anyway. Heavy users benefit from a fresh install ever 6-12
months. Light users a bit longer, but everyone should do an occasional
fresh install.

-- Bob
Click to expand...

Hi Bob,

My current hard drive has xp home preloaded on the end of the disc -
thats the only part I'm really interested in. If I can clone that then
(I think) I'll be able to use the recovery cd to reinstall windows - I
just dont know very much about this stuff & appreciate you & the
others who have answered.

--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 
J

John Latter

The OP is using Win XP, for which XXCOPY is unsuitable. Even on the
outside chance he chose FAT 32 instead of NTFS, he would likely
have problems using XXCOPY.

Art

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
Click to expand...

oh oh - that doesn't sound so good...

:(

--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 
J

John Latter

partition-saving. You will have to boot to DOS first and then launch
savepart.exe. You will also need an additional FAT partition, but with the
new HD you have that should not be a problem.
www.partition-saving.com
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link Onno - I'll have a look later!

--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 
J

John Latter

=========================================================================
DrvClonerXP clones NTFS and FAT32 drive partitions, for the Windows
2K/XP Operating System, by copying, byte-for-byte, the drive's partition
structure to another partition, creating a perfect duplicate, without
creating an intermediate image file (as with DrvImagerXP). The partition
clone is an exact reproduction of the original drive partition. Create
identical bootable partitions! Copy an existing hard drive onto a new
hard drive! Though not as powerful and flexible as "Drive Image" or
"Ghost" drive imaging programs, the simplicity, yet powerful
capabilities of DrvClonerXP make it the favorite choice for many. Click
a button to download (in the background) the latest DrvClonerXP updates
from the Lexun Freeware web site! DrvClonerXP is freeware! Pass it
around! Give it to your friends! Featured on TechTV in Australia! People
are using it all over the world! Also included are tips on using xcopy
for many situations where DrvClonerXP is not an option!

http://www.freeware.org.uk/disk.htm

========================================================================
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Disk Manager
Looking for Disk Manager? Disk Manager is no longer available for
download on our site, because systems with Windows XP and 2000 don't
require it. Regardless whether you use Windows 9.x or the latest version
of Windows, our simple installation guide will take you through the
installation steps, and our partitioning and formatting guide covers all
the details you need to know for installing our drive on Windows
operating systems.

Please follow the advice in these guides. If you need additional help or
have questions, feel free to contact our support center.

http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/4DD4DCCA11DE5EB186256D6A0061C8A8
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/E6F6028A3A58BEA286256D6A0060452D

========================================================================
Doing without learning what to do and how to do it can only result in
disaster. With your current level of experience your learning curve will
be steep, so get all the information you can about the task ahead of
you, and learn all that you can from the information you obtained, for a
successful transition from one hard disk to another.

========================================================================
You may also get additional information and utilities from the website
of your orginal hard disk manufacturer. (ie: Seagate, Maxtor, Western
Digital)

========================================================================
Click to expand...

Thanks Mel - I'm busy til the weekend but I should have some time
between now & then to look at some of the links.

--

John Latter

Model of an Internal Evolutionary Mechanism (based on an extension to homeostasis) linking Stationary-Phase Mutations to the Baldwin Effect.
http://members.aol.com/jorolat/TEM.html

'Where Darwin meets Lamarck?' Discussion Egroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evomech
 

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