[palmer41420]

I have a customer who would like for me to install a new hard drive. He does not have all of the install CDs for the programs that he needs so I think the best idea would be to clone his 40GB HD to a 80GB or larger drive. This is for an older Dell laptop with Windows XP Home.

Can you tell me a good free way to clone a hard drive?

I have access to symatec's Ghost program but I have not be successful in creating a boot disk that will work with the laptop even after following numberous tutorials.

If there is a different free program available used for cloning please link it and give instructions for how to use it if possible. If you have any other ideas please include them also.

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you could either make all of the hard drive on cds or removible disk and since its a laptop you cant add a second harddrive soo thats your only option

[tylerscool]

you could either make all of the hard drive on cds or removible disk and since its a laptop you cant add a second harddrive soo thats your only option

[palmer41420]

You cant load the system files to a CD as far as I know...I know how to back up files but I want to copy the programs also....

[tylerscool]

yes its possible to put on cds um in system restore under accerries there should be an option i got a old 1998 computer and this is also in there it should be there

[tylerscool]

o i see the programs too you could do it how i did it and that was by just running them directly it works half the time the other half sometimes don't agree, as far as getting them you would have to just back them up and cross your fingers

[palmer41420]

yeah i am looking for more of a disk copier rather than a backup. maybe someone else can tell me of a way to image the whole drive. i've looked into a program called driveimage xml but i'm not sure how it works with a laptop drive.

[tylerscool]

oooo you want to do that you can rar it but that will take all night long or image it but its looks to complicated for you i think right yes or no?

[palmer41420]

Thank you for your help but I will just wait for one of the site experts to assist me.

I don't think you and I are on the same page with what I am trying to accomplish. There are much easier ways than doing a rar.

[Troy]

Hi Palmer,

If perchance you happen to have Seagate hard drives, then you are able to use the DiscWizard program for free. This is a limited-features version of Acronis True Image, and I have used it to clone and backup before no problems (including making a bootable disc). By limited features, it does not allow "incremental" backups, only a full backup each time. So everytime I want to back up my computer, I have to back the whole lot up in one hit.

There should be no dramas if the hard drive is in a notebook or desktop.

I'm sure other manufacturer's have similar tools for download. You would just need to search the support/download pages for information on them.

Cheers

Troy

[Tyger]

Do you have a USB case that you can put the new drive in? You may have trouble connecting as a slave drive in the laptop itself, you may need to case to perform the cloning operation. Almost all major brand drives either come with a CD that allows cloning or you can download the disk image from the drive maker's site and burn it to disk.

[njlock]

I'm also trying to do this, can you clone drive to an external drive, set the external drive to boot, swap hard drives, and reverse the clone to new hard drive? Or wishful thinking?

[Tyger]

Something else you can do, if you have the adapter connectors that let you hook a 2.5" drive to a 3.5" cable, you can put both drives in a desktop with the original OS one in the master position and use the software CD to clone one to the other.

[Troy]

Hi njlock,

It may be possible to achieve this, but you might find only some programs are able to do this to external drives (i.e. USB, Firewire, ...), and other programs only to internal drives - in which case, Tyger's option would be the only choice.

Cheers

Troy