Disk Clone question - Please help a noob

[flub]

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone could help me.

I have a Vista 32Bit PC with an existing Hard Disk of 120GB (only 40GB used). I have just purchased a new SSD 64GB disk and I want to "clone" the exisiting disk onto the new faster disk, and then to use the new disk as my primary boot disk and use the old 120GB as just another drive.

So my questions are

1) What is the best way to clone the old disk onto the new one?
2) Is there any free software to do this
3) Are there any pitfalls or issues that I might encounter?

Thanks in advance

[peterb]

This is a question that has been asked many times - a search will find them. This one

http://forums.hexus.net/operating-sy...g-utility.html

is still active on the OS forum.

There are free solutions - Google will find them, or you can use a Linux live CD to boot from and use the dd command - ask back if you would like more info - that is the chaepest(free) and to my mind, simplest, solution. (Needs a little basic command line knowledge - but essentially is dd if=/dev/xxx of=/dev/yyy where xxx is the designation of the source disk (usually hda or sda, and yyy is the designation of the destination disk - the trickiest bit is determining those designators)

There are other commercial solutions, Acronis true image, Caspar XP and several others - again Google will be your friend. (I have used Caspar XP - its does what it says) which work from within windows.

Others will come back with their favourites - as to which is 'best' is debateable - if they do what you want with minimal fuss and effort, go for the cheapest.

[flub]

Thank you, sorry for not searching first

[0iD]

S'ok, I rarely remember either

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That thread looks familar....!

I used Paragon Partition Manager 8.5 Special Edition. You can still get it free:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r213...pecial-Edition

[peterb]

Thank you, sorry for not searching first

No problem!!

S'ok, I rarely remember either

Me neither