Want to clone my HDD.

[APoc184]

Just got a new 320GB Western Digital and was gonna use it as an external drive. But I would rather use the new HDD in my laptop and use the 160GB as my external.

I cannot do a clean install because the Vista that came with the laptop is pre-installed from the factory. So there is no disc or anything.

I want to clone the current 160GB onto the new 320GB. How do I go about this. Step by step instructions please. First time doing this again.

Thanks.

 

[LazyLion]

Disk Cloning is in the news...
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

 

[sn3rd]

1) Install Linux
2)

cat /dev/sda1 > drive_image.iso

 

[Messugga]

1. Download Acronis True Image
2. Follow steps as displayed on screen

Seriously, you can't go wrong and it's an excellent piece of kit that does exactly what you're looking for.

 

[howardb]

+1 for Acronis True Image - easy as pie...

 

[LazyLion]

Acronis is $50.00 for a licence... a bit steep for a one time use. Unless of course you meant that he should "download" it from somewhere else? How functional is the 15 day demo version?

 

[APoc184]

that article is recommending Clonezilla...

I checked out the Clonezilla site and it is just too much reading and instructions to follow. I downloaded Acronis and will attempt the cloning tonight. Seems pretty straight forward.

Acronis is $50.00 for a licence... a bit steep for a one time use. Unless of course you meant that he should "download" it from somewhere else? How functional is the 15 day demo version?

Apparently the 15 day demo is fully functional with no limitations. Just cant use it longer than the 15 days.
Well I only need it this once(for now), so I am going to give it a shot.

 

[The_Techie]

I can vouch for Acronis True Image, excellent piece of software

 

[APoc184]

I can vouch for Acronis True Image, excellent piece of software

I just scanned through the "how to get started" part yesterday.
Any tips? Or is it really as easy as click-and-clone?

I did notice that it mentions something about 1:1 ratio. It explains that if you have 2 partitions on your current drive(160GB) and you do automatic cloning at 1:1 ratio it will double those partitions on your new drive(320GB).
Which means---> My current drive with extra 9GB partition for Recovery, Backup and Restore will be doubled to 18GB on the new drive.

Is there a manual option where I can keep the partitions the same?

 

[killadoob]

Acronis is $50.00 for a licence... a bit steep for a one time use. Unless of course you meant that he should "download" it from somewhere else? How functional is the 15 day demo version?

Gary you should know programs are free dammit , besides i am glad i payed my money for acronis as it is really easy to use and not that expensive.