Cloning a hard drive using freeware?

J

John Corliss

Art said:
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.
Click to expand...

Thanks Art. I don't use XP so I wouldn't have known that.
 
J

J. Yazel

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...
===========================

How do you re-apply the Win updates after reinstalling Windows?

Downloading hours of updates again is not an option.

Thanks.

Jack
 
J

John Fitzsimons

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

Sure. XXCLONE.

http://www.xxclone.com

Made by the same person who wrote XXCOPY, Kan Yabumoto.

He is a person of exceptional personal integrity and technical
competence. He also has a mailing list and posts here from time to
time.
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.
Click to expand...

< snip >

Have you run ScanDisk and Defrag on your drive recently ? If you do
then bad sectors should be marked so that data isn't written to them.

Regards, John.
--
****************************************************
,-._|\ (A.C.F FAQ) http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html
/ Oz \ John Fitzsimons - Melbourne, Australia.
\_,--.x/ http://www.vicnet.net.au/~johnf/welcome.htm
v http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/
 
B

badgolferman

John said:
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!
Click to expand...

Didn't your new hard drive come with a floppy disk that lets you copy
the contents of your old drive to the new one? Maxtor has one, but it
probably won't work for you.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0
a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%
20Downloads/ATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=58

or
http://tinyurl.com/65gqy
 
O

ozzy

===========================

How do you re-apply the Win updates after reinstalling Windows?

Downloading hours of updates again is not an option.

Thanks.

Jack
Click to expand...
I find it easier to take a fresh HDD and install the OS on it. Then I
perform all current updates. THEN I image the drive BEFORE anything else
is installed. That way I always have a good clean image to work from.
Re-installing apps is not that time consuming.

ozzy
 
A

Art

Have a look at xxclone.

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

I just tried this on my Win 2K Pro machine, and it worked fine. It
created a bootable cloned drive in a very short time. I disabled
the main drive and I'm running right now from the clone ... a
secondary master.

IMO, this is a very good approach. There's no restriction that
the clone has to be about the same size as the source, as there
is with some sector cloners. In fact, my main drive is 60 gig and
the clone is only 7.6 gig capacity ... enough for me right now.

Art

http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
B

BobS

The CD that came with your new Hitachi drive has a stand-alone clone program
and disc diags. I did a clone to a new 250Gb drive and it worked like a
champ.

If you do not have SP1 installed, the OS will not recognize anything over
137Gb - assuming your BIOS does see the whole drive. If not, partition it
down to under 137Mb. But even on some older hardware (5 years old) the BIOS
could handle the larger drives and WinXP Pro with at least SP1 did the 48
bit addressing.

Bob S.
 
J

John Latter

Have a look at xxclone.

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

Its not freeware though is it?

Also, it copies files - will it copy the 'hidden' XP Home files on the
end of my existing HDD? That's what I want to do so that I can
reinstall XP using the recovery disk.

--

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

Didn't your new hard drive come with a floppy disk that lets you copy
the contents of your old drive to the new one? Maxtor has one, but it
probably won't work for you.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0
a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software%
20Downloads/ATA%20Hard%20Drives&downloadID=58

or
http://tinyurl.com/65gqy
Click to expand...

No floppy - oem product :(

--

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
 
P

Peter Seiler

John Latter - 29.06.2005 19:44 :
Thanks Mel - I'm busy til the weekend but I should have some time
between now & then to look at some of the links.
Click to expand...

~ 100 unnecessary quoting lines (snipped) only to say this?

Do you never snipp/shorten unnecessary quotings in your postings?
Please: you should.
 
W

Wayne Boatwright

Its not freeware though is it?

Also, it copies files - will it copy the 'hidden' XP Home files on the
end of my existing HDD? That's what I want to do so that I can
reinstall XP using the recovery disk.
Click to expand...

Try pci-clonemaxx. It copies the entire disk, not files. I have used it
with 100% success. It is freeware.

http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm

--
Wayne Boatwright *¿*
____________________________________________

Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
Sam Goldwyn, 1882-1974


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Virus Database (VPS): 0526-3, 06/30/2005
Tested on: 6/30/2005 5:35:04 AM
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http://www.avast.com
 
B

Bob Adkins

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

I don't always use my own advice. I clone HDD's fairly often, but they're
usually pretty clean Windows installs. If someone has a dozen programs
installed for which they can't find the install disks or serial numbers, I
throw up my hands and say "What the hell" and just clone the drive. It's
the coward's way out. :)



-- Bob
 
B

Bob Adkins

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.
Click to expand...

Hi John,

If you can do a pretty close 1:1 copy of your old drive, then XP can do a
"restore" type install. This means it will use your old registry settings,
and your installed hardware and software will still work.

Good luck!

-- Bob
 
B

Bob Adkins

I find it easier to take a fresh HDD and install the OS on it. Then I
perform all current updates. THEN I image the drive BEFORE anything else
is installed. That way I always have a good clean image to work from.
Re-installing apps is not that time consuming.
Click to expand...

No, no that won't do. That's the *smart* way to do it. :)

-- Bob
 
J

John Latter

Try pci-clonemaxx. It copies the entire disk, not files. I have used it
with 100% success. It is freeware.

http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm
Click to expand...

Thanks Wayne! Someone else has suggested it too so I hope to have time
to look at it at the weekend!

--

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

Hi John,

If you can do a pretty close 1:1 copy of your old drive, then XP can do a
"restore" type install. This means it will use your old registry settings,
and your installed hardware and software will still work.

Good luck!

-- Bob
Click to expand...

Hi Bob,

This program looks the best bet at the moment

http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm

but I won't really have time to look at it 'til the weekend at the
earliest (never gonna buy preinstalled Windows again though!).

--

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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