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Thread: Backingup/copying windows from one harddrive to another

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    Backingup/copying windows from one harddrive to another

    Basically my c: drive which is home to my windows seems to be dying (its making funny sounds since I dropped it ) so I was wondering if I can back it up/copy it to another hard drive in its entirity and use the new hard drive as my boot drive (I have an empty hard drive at the moment)

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    Norton Ghost will create an exact 'image' of one drive on another. Unfortunately its not free. There may be some freeware/shareware programs that will do what you want, but I'm not aware of them.
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    Another one is Acronis TrueImage. I think you can get a free 30-day trial of this program. Have a search in www.download.com
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    or...

    dd.

    it's a very basic unix tool, included in all versions of unix, linux & bsd.

    i used dd to move debian, xp x64, and xp home from one disk to another, and the worst thing that happened was debian wanting to check disks for errors.

    the syntax is:

    dd if=/path/to/source/file of=/path/to/destination/file bs=10M

    since in unix, "everything's a file", the file meaning "your hard disk" is usually hda for IDE, and sda for SATA/SCSI - so i ran "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=10M", left it a few hours, and that was *IT*

    free, and not as complex as it may seem.

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    http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

    best freeware disk image software I've used
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    I've used Acronis Migrate Easy for this, very simple to use. New hard drive was up and running in less than an hour. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...s/migrateeasy/

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    Or you can try out the sublime, Paragon Drive Backup 6.0 over at...

    http://www.drive-backup.com/home/personal/demo.htm

    You don't even have to leave Windows for it to work either...

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    I use seagate discwizard, its my fave tool and I used it today actually! Worked a treat. I replaced an old whiney hdd with a nice new huge one
    (neither one is a seagate)

    http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ceefer
    Norton Ghost will create an exact 'image' of one drive on another. Unfortunately its not free. There may be some freeware/shareware programs that will do what you want, but I'm not aware of them.

    so probably being stupid here but does that mean say if I make an 'image' of my c: drive on my 'g: drive' I can use my g: drive as my main drive and get rid of my old c: drive?

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    Another vote for Acronis Migrate Easy. I've used Ghost & I still prefer Migrate Easy. Does exactly what it says on the tin
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    Quote Originally Posted by YorkieBen
    so probably being stupid here but does that mean say if I make an 'image' of my c: drive on my 'g: drive' I can use my g: drive as my main drive and get rid of my old c: drive?
    Yes

    There are a couple of options with most programs:

    1. Copy C to new drive (G in your case) and then remove C (G will become C).

    2. Copy C to new drive and keep old drive (I think C will become G and G will become C)

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    having tried Acronis True Image myself, just now, its not too clear whether or not i can boot the image made and restore my hdd from a fresh install, without reinstalling windows and acronis and hitting "Restore Image"

    will my "backup.tib" boot from cd/dvd if i burn it?

    if not, what app will create a bootable image so i can restore my drive from fresh.

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    i don't really like Ghost, might try some of these others

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    I got a question re: imaging programs...

    why couldn't you just copy the complete contents of c: (old hdd) to c: (new hdd)?

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    If you literally just copy and paste you would not copy over the registry, the pagefile, and other important data. The imaging programs make sure all this date is copied over.

    They can also be useful to create an image in a compressed form so it doesnt take up too much space on your second hard drive for backup.

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    Quote Originally Posted by chet
    I got a question re: imaging programs...

    why couldn't you just copy the complete contents of c: (old hdd) to c: (new hdd)?
    One reason is the way Windows STILL bodges long filenames. Every long filename has a short (8.3) filename too. Some parts of the registry refer to the short filename instead of the long one. D'oh!

    When you copy a file, copying the long filename is no problem. But what happens to the short filename is unpredictable. It can change during the copy process.

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