Moving system data to new hard drive query

[Brewster0101]

Small question.....

Needs to move my contents of one drive to another including operating system without any problems. Need to upgrade size of hard drive but do not want to re-install anything.

Cheers

[Viper81]

You forgot to ask the question but I'll hazzard a guess ..

Something like Acronis True Image will do the job and is simple enough to use but isn't free, otherwise I'm sure someone can point you in the direction of a open-source alternative..

[Brewster0101]

Sorry - Question is...

Can any one recommend a piece of software that can go an exact copy from one hard drive to the other including operating system so that it all works 100% on new hard drive. Not too keen on paying for software as I only need to go it once, but a small price would be ok.

Cheers

[TheReaFireblade]

The likes of Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image are the usual suggestions, due to the features they offer.
But the FREE Edition of HD Clone is an alternative solution

[peterb]

A live linux CD and the dd command.

You need a little bit of Linux knowledge but

Connect the source and target drives to the computer

Boot off the CD (I use Knoppix for this)

Identify the source and taget drives - if they are connected to the primary and secondary channels of an IDE interface, they will be hda and hdb. If they are SATA drives, they will probably be sd* where x is a drive letter - probably a and b.

Make sure you have identified them correctly!!!!

Open a terminal window as root (with the # prompt)

type the following command

dd if=dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

(if means input file - in Linux, everything is a file! - of means output file)

Go and have (several) cups of coffee - depending on how big the drive is. Do not get teh order the wrong way round!

You can also use the dd command to erase a disk

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda (for example) This will write zeros to every location on hda.

For a full explanation of the dd command, google man dd - but you don't need all the options or capabilities for these jobs.

(dd only writes to 'visible' areas of the disk - it won't write to host protected areas for example)

[Brewster0101]

The likes of Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image are the usual suggestions, due to the features they offer.
But the FREE Edition of HD Clone is an alternative solution

HD clone seems very much what I need and for free... Awesome.. Cheers