Best Hard Drive Cloning Software

G

greggpb

Expert Member
Joined
Apr 22, 2005
Messages
1,818
Reaction score
0
Location
Cape Town
i am looking for hardrive cloning software that is reality easy and free if possible to clone my laptop so i can install a new hard drive with with win 7
 
Disk Cloning
http://www.ioltechnology.co.za/article_page.php?iArticleId=4308383

that article is recommending Clonezilla...
http://clonezilla.sourceforge.net/

But here is another article looking at the best of the disk cloning tools...
(Clonezilla is top of their list too)...
http://packratstudios.com/index.php...ghost-who-a-list-of-open-source-alternatives/

They are as follows...
Ping...
http://ping.windowsdream.com/
PartImage...
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page
g4u...
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
linbox...
http://lrs.linbox.org/
and FOG...
http://freeghost.no-ip.org/

Free Disk Imaging/Cloning Software...
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
http://www.clonezilla.org/
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/xxclone.html
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/download.html
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm
 
Gary, you being the Great Software Oracle that you are, and there being so MANY links to chase down there :eek:, can you confirm that at least some of those are able to handle Win7's 100MB partition it creates ..you know, that extra one that XP never had?

Ah, *now* I remember why I had that Easeus Todo Backup tab lying around:
EASEUS Todo Backup enables you to clone the entire disk fast both in windows and bootable CD. It can backup your system partition to image to quickly get the system up and running in the event of a system crash or hardware failure and allows you to restore after viruses attack, unstable software download, and hard drive failure. Meanwhile, EASEUS Todo Backup works with Windows systems, like Windows 2000 Professional/XP/Vista/Window 7 and Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 and can create bootable CD.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Alternatively, it seems it's built-in ..so just do that. ;)
Just done it! Works a treat (Well done microsoft).

It's really easy to move a windows 7 install from your old hard drive to your new one.

All you need is a hard drive big enough to carry the image. It can be internal or external.

Goto Control Panel > Backup and Restore > Create a system image.

Also create a System Repair disc (although i am sure that your original boot DVD will work).

If you have more than 2 internal hard drives one thing to check when you restore your drive is in the advanced options because you have to unselect the drives you DON'T want to apply the saved image too... Bit wierd but thats the only thing to check.

For those moving to a larger hard disk it will create an identically sized partition but once you boot into your new installation you can easy have the Disk management "extend" the drive space. (REALLY IMPRESSED MS!)

All you have to do is open Windows Explorer > Right click on 'Computer' > Manage > Disk Management > Right click on the partition that holds the OS > select EXPAND... > then select next. INSTANTLY makes the space ready.

I tried doing it with GHOST 15 and I failed to get it working. IMHO Ghost 15 not for the home user.
Click to expand...
 
Just use clonezilla, it's free and easy to use and has never failed me.
 
If it was me I would have just booted into Linux live CD and ran

dd if=/dev/drive1 of=/dev/drive2

And gone to lunch.....
 
Elimentals said:
If it was me I would have just booted into Linux live CD and ran

dd if=/dev/drive1 of=/dev/drive2

And gone to lunch.....
Click to expand...

That's a sure way for a nooblet to destroy his data, way to many idiots out there have swapped the devices around....
 
Old thread but agreed with Clonezilla. Switch from Ghost to it.
 
ponder said:
That's a sure way for a nooblet to destroy his data, way to many idiots out there have swapped the devices around....
Click to expand...

Sooo very, very true...

Thats why I said if "it was me" and not say hey just use dd esp seeing that I hope the man asking the question cloned his disk already :)
 
Not to scare anybody too much, but I had a dickens of a time to fix a problem with a Windows 7 drive that was cloned using plain ol' dd.

It turns out that Windows 7 does low-level calls into the disk, and if the sector size changes (old drives have 512 byte sectors, newer ones have 4K sectors), things like Windows Update fails with very weird error messages. Look for the ESENT/JET corruption: Cannot check for Updates problems.

The moral of the story is, load the hotfix BEFORE you clone your drive, and after you cloned it, run Windows Update. If it works fine, you're OK, but if it doesn't, it might be a lot easier to go back to the old drive, because you need a working Windows Update in order to load the hotfix!
 
Silverlight said:
Why the thread necro?
Click to expand...

I would not have replied to the thread if it was not on the front page. I suspect a spammer might have resurrected it, I replied without checking dates and the spammers post was deleted after I posted. I never go searching for posts to reply to.
 
cloned my primary drive onto an ADATA SDD using the software provided
worked like a charm.

Arconis TrueImage
 
HDClone is brilliant, but it definitely ain't free! :(

Update: There does seem to be a free version, but it's severely crippled.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X