Image Copy of NTFS HDD to External Drive

J

jaugustine

Hi,
I recently bought a Seagate 500GB external drive that plugs into the
USB port. I would like to buy a program like Norton's Ghost or other to do
an image copy of my Wife's NTFS (120GB) HDD in her Dell WinXP Home
Edition laptop.

I realize I may have to use a "virtual machine" so the "main" OS isn't
"running" in order to access all the system files, unless this is handled by
the program for me.

My motive for doing this, in the event I have to replace her HDD in
the future. I want to avoid the ordeal of installing the OS and all the aps
she installed afterwards, not to mention all the configuring that was done.

What program do you recommend for this task?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address
 
S

SC Tom

Hi,
I recently bought a Seagate 500GB external drive that plugs into
the
USB port. I would like to buy a program like Norton's Ghost or other to
do
an image copy of my Wife's NTFS (120GB) HDD in her Dell WinXP Home
Edition laptop.

I realize I may have to use a "virtual machine" so the "main" OS
isn't
"running" in order to access all the system files, unless this is handled
by
the program for me.

My motive for doing this, in the event I have to replace her HDD in
the future. I want to avoid the ordeal of installing the OS and all the
aps
she installed afterwards, not to mention all the configuring that was
done.

What program do you recommend for this task?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address

There are a number of programs that will do what you want, some free, some
retail. The one I use and like is Acronis True Image. There is a free
version for Seagate owners called Disc Wizard. You probably got a CD of it
along with your external drive. If not, you can get it here:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

One of the things I like about it (and it's not a feature unique to ATI) is
the ability to create a boot CD to run the program. You boot from the CD,
and run the program independent of the OS- no virtual machine needed. You
can do full images and incremental ones, so once you have a full, you can
regularly do incremental ones. Although with the speed it runs, it doesn't
take much time to create a full image.

You can get more info on the full version of ATI here:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/
 
J

Jim

Hi,
I recently bought a Seagate 500GB external drive that plugs into the
USB port. I would like to buy a program like Norton's Ghost or other to do
an image copy of my Wife's NTFS (120GB) HDD in her Dell WinXP Home
Edition laptop.

I realize I may have to use a "virtual machine" so the "main" OS isn't
"running" in order to access all the system files, unless this is handled by
the program for me.

My motive for doing this, in the event I have to replace her HDD in
the future. I want to avoid the ordeal of installing the OS and all the aps
she installed afterwards, not to mention all the configuring that was done.

What program do you recommend for this task?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address
Macrium Reflect ( free edition ) .
 

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