Cloning Hard Drive?

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Phexx

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Ultimate Geek
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#75389 17-Jan-2011 23:48

Hey everyone, I am new here - coming from ultimatecomputers.net, hopefully I can help as well as be helped.

Anyway, I am going to be upgrading my hard drive from 50GB to 500GB and I really want to avoid having re-install all of drivers, programs, settings ect. After a computer failure 5 months ago I have already had to re-install EVERYTHING.

That took about a whole week to do and I really want to avoid the hassle. So, is there anyway to save a clone of a hard drive onto an external hard drive, then "restore" it to the new HDD? Or, any programs that will do a very thorough backup?

Zeon

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#428282 18-Jan-2011 00:25

I just did exactly this using Acronis 2011 home edition. Worked fine except it can't deal with partitions.

I went from 120GB SATA to 80GB SSD and it resized my NTFS partition properly.

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Phexx

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#428283 18-Jan-2011 00:32

Downloading the demo now, did you use the demo or full version?

Zeon

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#428313 18-Jan-2011 08:52

I used the full version as someone gave me a license. I think the demo should suffice though? PM if you need a key.

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Ragnor

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#428383 18-Jan-2011 11:55

These are good free options:

Macrium Reflect Free
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Paragon Backup and Recovery Free
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

Zeon

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#430024 22-Jan-2011 21:40

Hey Guys,
I'm in urgent need of something like this for a virtual server running under ESXi. VMware converter isn't liking it as its larger than 1TB and the plan now is to clone to an iSCSI target however I can't find anything that can do this for Win 2008 server.

Suggestions welcome!

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Ragnor

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#430057 22-Jan-2011 23:14

Check this table:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software

So NTFS, Live Copying and Free/GPL... there are a couple. More if you go to paid software.

Mighty Ape

Shop now at Mighty Ape (affiliate link).

CarlosTheJackal

16 posts

Geek

#434660 3-Feb-2011 09:12

I used Segate disk wizard to clone my old HDD onto my new one. Worked a treat & it's free

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=DiscWizard&vgnextoid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Ragnor

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#434758 3-Feb-2011 12:14

Seagate DiscWizard is a cut down rebranded version of Acronis, iirc. Also won't work if it doesn't detect at least one Seagate drive in your computer.