Can I clone and boot from 2nd HD?

[Opusita]

Hello,

After a chash and a tech support recommended restoration (which wasn't
necessary) back to factory conditions I now have my computer back. In order
to avoid this hassle again I want to buy an external USB enclosure, install
a HD into it and clone my entire computer HD onto the USB HD. Then if I have
another failure/crash I would physically swap HD's and be back to normal in
less than an hour instead of days. Will this work and if so what is the best
way to perform the cloning?

Any other comments or suggestions on how to minimize the problems of a crash
would also be appreciated.

Marian

 

[Frank Jelenko]

Hello,

After a chash and a tech support recommended restoration (which wasn't
necessary) back to factory conditions I now have my computer back. In order
to avoid this hassle again I want to buy an external USB enclosure, install
a HD into it and clone my entire computer HD onto the USB HD. Then if I have
another failure/crash I would physically swap HD's and be back to normal in
less than an hour instead of days. Will this work and if so what is the best
way to perform the cloning?

Any other comments or suggestions on how to minimize the problems of a crash
would also be appreciated.

Marian

That should work - Drive Image from Powerquest supports cloning to USB
drives.
You would want to make sure, after cloning to the USB drive, you don't boot
the system with the USB drive attached. I think there could be a problem
when you went to use it to boot your system [i.e., if/when your system died
again].

 

[Guest]

Use this , I do

copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ make the clone and then
un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161151.html

 

[Alex Nichol]

After a chash and a tech support recommended restoration (which wasn't
necessary) back to factory conditions I now have my computer back. In order
to avoid this hassle again I want to buy an external USB enclosure, install
a HD into it and clone my entire computer HD onto the USB HD. Then if I have
another failure/crash I would physically swap HD's and be back to normal in
less than an hour instead of days. Will this work and if so what is the best
way to perform the cloning?

I'd use BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day
full functional trial)

Which apart from its original role in boot management is a full
partition manager and will make and restore images of partitions to
devices on USB. It will also do so to DVD sets, using any internal (or
probably USB) DVD burner - that is what I use. About 7GB of actual data
compresses to one DVD, so one or two should handle regular imaging of a
system partition. Data files are probably better handled separately on
a file-oriented basis