Hi I have just recieved my new harddisk seeing as my old one died on me, but I have in the meantime used the disk from my external WD mybook, I just dissasembled it. Now I have received my new Seagate F3, and I dont want to go through all the hassle of reinstalling everything, is there some software that makes a true 1:1 copy of the disk I'm currently using? Perhaps via USB as I can just pop the new drive in my external enclosure. Help will be appreciated!
i have has good results with clonezilla. it runs as a livecd and allows local and network clone / restore of both whole disks and partitions. also i would leave both disks in the pc connected by sata / ide and pop the drive back into usb after its done since it will write a whole lot faster connected to the onboard disk controller.
Another vote for clonezilla. When the RMA for my WD Caviar Black 640gb turns up this week it is that tool I shall I attempt to use to copy my data over I've used it for backups to USB or other drives several times. Just make sure - as with any other cloning app - you're totally sure which is the source and the destination!!
We use Acronis at work. It's not free though But of my quick look at the available free ones, CloneZilla looks to be the trick With most cloning programs, if the F3 is 100% unused (ie not even formatted/partitioned) then the cloning program should automatically select that as the destination drive. At least, that's what Ghost and Acronis do by default. Be careful.
My pc is currently running acronis right now, I'm quite skeptical about how it will turn out, but I hope I am positively surprised hehe
Now I'm only being finicky as it might help.....forgive me But a 1:1 drive copier is simply the 'nix command dd that will copy your disk bit for bit I don't think you want this - there has to be a level of intelligence in a copying tool so that, for instance, if your old and new drives are different sizes or types etc then it will actually work 1:1 copying is used if you want to put the same contents back on the same drive as before in the same state it was in before.... is it a valid way of clearing your ssd for trimming though? I would think so as theres no defrag issues etc on an SSD?
Clonezilla is getting a stack dump error when trying to copy my Windows 7 partitions. Dunno if its my PC or if there's something different about Windows 7 partitions that aren't playing well with CZ.
Norton Ghost 14. All you need for back up and imaging your drive. Create a back-up, swap out your hard drive for the new one, then restore from the back up CD... reboot. It's as if nothing has changed. I've used it since version 7 and it's been nothing short of fantastic.
Paragon Drive Copy SE 9.0 (Will give you free serial key when registered) Clonezilla Enough been said. DriveImageXML
or use a live linux distro that has GParted on it (ubuntu is good) that way you dont have to be using the drive as you're copying from it, which has caused me some problems in the past. you can download a bootable version of GParted, but it takes ages to boot... i'd still advise ubuntu. otherwise paragon has worked for me.
WD have a customised version of acronis for free. http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp only works with western digital drives though
