Mirror a hard drive

[Justin]

Hi all,

maybe this should be in the Oracle section but as it is a PC question i'm not so sure

anyhoo, i am after some advise please

as i have never attempted this before i thought you gurus could help me?

if i had a 160gb hard drive fully set up and running a legit win7 64bit set up can i copy that drive to a replacement 500gb hard drive? would windows still work etc?

what software would you suggest?

cheers, Justin

 

[scrappysphinx]

I used to Norton Ghost or Acronis True to do exactly what you want, create an image of the system then restore that image to a larger drive but they're not free and i haven't used them since Windows 98 was current

apparently though, EaseUS Todo Backup is freeware and claims to be able to do just that. I haven't personally used it though

 

[Gouldin]

Use this app, it will clone the drive whilst you're in windows, no need to make a boot disk

Dell, HP etc use a modified version of this app to image their stacks of HDD's during assembly.

http://www.backup-utility.com/download.html

This is free btw

 

[ptp170]

CloneZilla is also very good

 

[demolition]

I usually use Clonezilla for this purpose. It's a bootable image and it should copy any system and can resize the partition on the destination drive as well.

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php

 

[-Acid-]

Do any of these work on Amiga hard drives? so if I have an Amiga drive connected via ide or usb can this software clone it including the RDB, or does it have to be a PC file system formatted disk?

 

[demolition]

Clonezilla should be able to clone anything (but obviously would not be able to expand the partition etc. for all file system types).

 

[Justin]

great info, thank you guys

 

[protek]

Windows has a built in imaging utility but I don't know if it'll work with different sized drives. I've also used Migrate OS to SSD. I can't see why it wouldn't work with regular hard drives.

Edit: Apparently Windows' own system image backup is restored in original size but that can be rectified simply by extending the partition afterwards.

 

[Merlin]

Clonezilla FTW

 

[woodycool]

Personally I like Norton Ghost, but if your conscience doesn't allow you to use software that you've not paid for then CloneZilla is awesome.
However, when I've used CloneZilla in the past, it has failed to resize the available space to fit the new drive, therefore requiring partitioning software to 'extend' the drive.

 

[-Acid-]

Personally I like Norton Ghost, but if your conscience doesn't allow you to use software that you've not paid for then CloneZilla is awesome.
However, when I've used CloneZilla in the past, it has failed to resize the available space to fit the new drive, therefore requiring partitioning software to 'extend' the drive.

My conscience doesn't allow me to use anything made by Norton whether paid for or not! lol

 

[woodycool]

My conscience doesn't allow me to use anything made by Norton whether paid for or not! lol

You say that, but Norton Ghost is a good product - probably the ONLY product Norton can actually make well.
Recent versions can even clone the OS you're actually booted from (in real time) using Volume Shadow Copy technology.
Granted, everything else that Norton make is rather pants, but Ghost is a decent product.

My second choice is CloneZilla and my third choice would be to boot a Linux 'Live CD' and use the dd command like this:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

 

[-Acid-]

Is there any way to mount an Amiga hard drive in Windows? (similar to mounting PC0 on the Amiga to read PC formatted disks).

 

[Justin]

only though Winuae as far as i am aware

 

[woodycool]

Is there any way to mount an Amiga hard drive in Windows? (similar to mounting PC0 on the Amiga to read PC formatted disks).

Only via WinUAE unfortunately.
However, under Linux, it is possible to mount Amiga FFS and SFS filesystems.

 

[johnim]

i just tried clonezilla from ssd to ssd and it wouldnt work so using minitool drive copy

 

[User1301]

Hey Justin - my preference here would be as Protek said earlier - use Windows own Driver Mirroring tool (you just use the disk manager). It's extremely quick and straight forward and works fine with different sized drives (although it will leave you with a large unused partition on the bigger drive - but that's no big deal). Once the drive is mirrored; break the mirror (again very easy to do), remove the small drive and thats you done.

J

 

[ColourWheel64]

My conscience doesn't allow me to use anything made by Norton whether paid for or not! lol

You say that, but Norton Ghost is a good product - probably the ONLY product Norton can actually make well.
Recent versions can even clone the OS you're actually booted from (in real time) using Volume Shadow Copy technology.
Granted, everything else that Norton make is rather pants, but Ghost is a decent product.

My second choice is CloneZilla and my third choice would be to boot a Linux 'Live CD' and use the dd command like this:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

Woodycool is correct. Ghost is effective, easy to use and fast. (about 15mins for 100GB)

 

[Justin]

thanks guys, i have a 40gb miggy drive i want to chuck onto a 500gb drive, i'll start it this weekend