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Want to clone my boot disk....not sure what do to

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - Want to clone my boot disk....not sure what do to

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leokreizman   09-08-2008 at 06:07:26 PM

Hello All...I have a great machine with two harddrives, an almost full 300gb hard drive which is my boot disk, and another 500gb one which is half full...they are both seagate barracuda's purchased within the last 2 years...7200 rpm and such

I'm wondering if there is a way to clone my vista ultimate OS to a new hard drive, preferabbly with a 10,000rpm or more. I can't afford\do not want to to lose information or reinstall a ton of programs that I have on my boot disk.
does anyone have any ideas? I am deciding between extra storage for my many movies, games, and music, or a new fast harddrive to get the most of my machine and quicken my boot speed with what i have. I can only have 3 harddrives in my machine at a time...
any suggestions are appreciated.

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qwertycopter   09-08-2008 at 06:22:47 PM
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Check out Acronis True Image:

 

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/

 

I think a free way to do it would be a gParted Live CD:

 

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/


Message edited by qwertycopter on 09-08-2008 at 06:24:14 PM
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azmtbkr81   09-08-2008 at 06:24:38 PM
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I would suggest Norton Ghost for disk cloning, I've used it and it works well. I know Seagate also makes a disk cloning program that is free to download and use.

Reply to azmtbkr81
IH8U   09-08-2008 at 06:28:42 PM
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I suggest getting a copy of BartPE (I use it at work, and it has Ghost in it), and a ~200GB external HDD (can go smaller, or larger). Then image the HDD to the external (takes about 15-20min to burn the image, and 10-20 min to install the image)

P.S. Make sure your USB ports are 2.0 (1.0 doubles or triples this time).

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piratepast40   09-08-2008 at 06:48:30 PM
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Your Seagate drives came with Acronis clone software. You've allready got everything you need.

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leokreizman   09-08-2008 at 07:44:21 PM
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Thanks for the replies guys...he thing is that although the two drives are seagate i might want to get a large western digital as I've heard they are faster...bad idea?
on the other hand, if the WD hard drive is going to be 7200 ~ anyway would it be worth it just to get a seagate? as i said i am making a decision between getting a huge new hard drive, or a smaller, faster one...(10K rpm), most of the best are from WD.
a third option i guess would be copying my boot disk to a 10K hdd, discarding the original boot hdd and replacing it with a large capacity one....

Message quoted 1 times
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IH8U   09-08-2008 at 07:55:47 PM
- 0 +

For that I still recommend BartPE, as it can clone a image to disimilar HDD's (a 150GB, to a 500GB with no issues). BartPE is run off of a CD, burn a copy from here: http://www.brothersoft.com/downloads/bartpe-cd.html
I can't check the site as it's blocked here at work (d@mn Bluecoat).

Reply to IH8U
evongugg   09-08-2008 at 08:05:01 PM
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The trial of Acronis True Image should do the job also.

------------------------------ Google is your friend and Bob's your uncle
 Reply to evongugg
Paperdoc   09-10-2008 at 05:33:13 AM
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If you want to go WD, check out their website. Seagate makes available for free on their site some software called Disk Wizard for exactly this purpose - migrating a complete drive to a new one as a perfect clone so you can replace an older drive with a new larger one. BUT their Disk Wizard will only make a clone onto a Seagate drive. And yes, in reality it is Acronis software.

Likewise, WD has a similar free downloadable package for the same purpose, and it only will clone onto a WD drive. Several other HDD makers do the same.

Reply to Paperdoc
qwertycopter   09-10-2008 at 07:08:53 PM
- 0 +

leokreizman wrote :

Thanks for the replies guys...he thing is that although the two drives are seagate i might want to get a large western digital as I've heard they are faster...bad idea?
on the other hand, if the WD hard drive is going to be 7200 ~ anyway would it be worth it just to get a seagate? as i said i am making a decision between getting a huge new hard drive, or a smaller, faster one...(10K rpm), most of the best are from WD.
a third option i guess would be copying my boot disk to a 10K hdd, discarding the original boot hdd and replacing it with a large capacity one....

 

Which WD are you talking about? There is a 640GB drive which has only two platters.. high platter density like this improves performance. Seagate recently released their own 640GB 2-platter drive. It's the same price but has a 5 year warranty (vs. 3) and a 32MB cache (vs. 16MB), so it's probably a better buy. I've not seen any performance reviews yet. Another nice thing about Seagate is that they properly implement Native Command Queueing if that's a feature you'll be using.

 

WD 640GB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136218

 

Seagate 640GB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148335


Message edited by qwertycopter on 09-10-2008 at 07:10:10 PM
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