Disk cloning software

[Bob]

Looking to upgrade my Dell 6000 XP SP2 laptop hard drive from 40gb to 120gb.

I'm looking for recommendations for disk cloning software, free or retail.
I've looked at HDClone and XXCLONE on the freeware side and Acronis Migrate
Easy and a couple of others on the retail side. Since this laptop has a 55mb
EISA hidden partition and a 3.77gb Fat32 hidden partition for the factory
restore, I'd like to make sure that these hidden partitons and the XP system
partition all get cloned properly.

Thanks

 

[Bill Blanton]

I use Terabyte's CopyWipe, setting it to do a "Raw sector copy". That will force it
to do a dumb sector by sector copy of the whole disk. Just be very careful when
choosing source and destination disks.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.php

Afterwards, you can use a partition manager to utilize the rest of the disk.

 

[AJR]

Recommend Acronis True Image. In addition to providing "cloning" it will
also provide backup and restore - use the old drive (external USB cases are
available) for backups. Having the bckups will eliminate the need for the
recovery partition

Acronis alos includes several good utilities such as dik info eliminator
and a system file cleaner.

 

[Jim Cladingboel]

I've been using Norton Ghost for several years and am totally happy with
it. I hear good things about Acronis True Image too, but have never used
it. Right now I'm using Ghost 9 on my XP machines and Ghost 12 on my
Vista partitions.

DriveImage XML is freeware and works very well. Find it on Google.
Bear in mind that, depending on the software you choose, you will
need to make a bootable CD in the event of a major system crash.
Also remember to make a series of images, preferably three, and update
them in sequence.
Do NOT just rely on updating the same one....
HTH,

Jim.

 

[Bob]

Thanks to you all for your info and suggestions. I appreciate you taking the
time to answer.

Bob