Can I Clone My Boot Drive To My New WD SATA?

[Ken Hall]

I just bought a Western Digital SATA drive. I asked two different
clerks if I would be able to make an exact clone of my existing main
drive. Both assured me I could. I have now opened the package and
the installation instructions talk about creating partitions in
preparation for copying the old drive to the new drive. For it to
cloned the drive it the resulting drive would have the same partitions
as are on the source (old) drive. It also has this phrase, "This
utility enables you to copy files from one drive to another." Files?
I don't want to copy individual files. I want to clone an entire
drive bit-for-bit.

In my case I have 4 bootable partitions using Partition Magic's Boot
Magic boot manager -- one XP partition, and 3 Win98 partitions.
There's a fifth partition on the drive visible to all. I want to
clone this drive. Doesn't Western Digital's setup software (called
Data Lifeguard I think) make a exact copy (clone) of your previous
drive when you install a new main drive? If not, I must abandon this
change, and return the drive.

Ken

 

[J. Clarke]

I just bought a Western Digital SATA drive. I asked two different
clerks if I would be able to make an exact clone of my existing main
drive. Both assured me I could. I have now opened the package and
the installation instructions talk about creating partitions in
preparation for copying the old drive to the new drive. For it to
cloned the drive it the resulting drive would have the same partitions
as are on the source (old) drive. It also has this phrase, "This
utility enables you to copy files from one drive to another." Files?
I don't want to copy individual files. I want to clone an entire
drive bit-for-bit.

In my case I have 4 bootable partitions using Partition Magic's Boot
Magic boot manager -- one XP partition, and 3 Win98 partitions.
There's a fifth partition on the drive visible to all. I want to
clone this drive. Doesn't Western Digital's setup software (called
Data Lifeguard I think) make a exact copy (clone) of your previous
drive when you install a new main drive? If not, I must abandon this
change, and return the drive.

Go to the Western Digital site, click "support", then in the "search the
knowledgebase" box at the lower right plug in "1151" (without the quotation
marks). If that doesn't help, just get a copy of Ghost and be done with
it--you won't have to worry about the crappy utilities that come bundled
with drives anymore. Since you have Partition Magic I'm surprised you
don't have Drive Image as well.

 

[Ken Hall]

Go to the Western Digital site, click "support", then in the "search the
knowledgebase" box at the lower right plug in "1151" (without the quotation
marks).

I spoke to a tech support person this morning and she said you have to
do it one partition at a time and she doesn't know if it will work
with bootable partitions.

Ken

 

[J. Clarke]

I spoke to a tech support person this morning and she said you have to
do it one partition at a time and she doesn't know if it will work
with bootable partitions.

Try the procedure--first-tier techs don't always know what they're talking
about.

Also, Partition Magic is supposed to have a disk copy utility included,
which is probably the lightweight version of Drive Image.

 

[Dave L]

You can only clone Windows XP boot partitions to a drive with the same
geometry!

Dave

 

[Eric Gisin]

Nonsense. Perhaps if you use Gnu dd.