Copying Image To External HD

I have Norton Ghost. Can I copy an image of my primary HD to my external USB HD? And can I recover it in the event of a crash of my primary drive?
Thanks!

 

This is free, small and copies to a USB drive, look at XXClone here http://www.xxclone.com/index.htm Click "˜Download’ in the left pane and select the freeware version.

It can take quite some time to complete depending upon the speed and size of the disk being cloned. Warning, make sure you select the correct Target Volume then before the cloning process go to the Cool Tools Tab > Make Bootable and tick/run all three "˜options’ and, if you wish, the "˜Duplicate Volume ID‘ option.

 

Thank you so much for the replies. I appreciate it! The XXClone sounds simple
enough.

 

I decided to buy a new internal HD. I used XXClone this morning to copy my C drive to the new drive. I did exactly as instructed. I tried to boot the new HD and Im getting this message "NTLDR is compressed, press ctrl alt delete "
What did I do wrong? I went to Cool Tools and made sure I checked make bootable.
Any advice?
Thanks.

 

Have you set the cloned drive to Master to boot?

I've only ever used XXClone on IDE. Is the new drive an IDE or SATA?

EDIT: There are plenty of Google hits on this compression message, here is one http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...&cc=us&docname=c00220758&dlc=en&product=12455

 

Yes.. I set it in the bios to be master to test it. Its an IDE 80 GB Seagate internal HD.
Thanks.

 

I was actually thinking of the little jumper on the back of the disk.

Had you compressed the disk before running XXClone?

 

No.. I didnt reset the jumper. What I did was shut off the main primary drive in the bios and set the slave (the new HD) as the boot drive. All I did with the new drive was to format it. I didnt give it a command to compress anything. I then used XXClone checking the options to make it bootable.

 

Sorry, I meant did you compress your existing HDD before running XXClone, which presumably clones the compression.

I think Google is going to be your salvation.

 

hahahahahaha... Google always is!
No.. didnt compress my primary before I cloned.
*sigh* oh well... Thanks for your suggestions. I appreciate it!

 

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful and I don't want you to think it's the fault of XXClone. I've used it on my laptop and desktops and it has always behaved impeccably.

Ordinarily, when the cloned drive is booted for the first time a message appears indicating that XXClone has done it’s job.

 

Ill start from scatch. Will reformat the HD and do it again. See what happens.

 

It's probably not a factor but I always close everything down before cloning!

Good luck.

 

Success! It was my fault. The error was in the formatting, not XXClone.
Once I formatted correctly, it was a snap. I would very much recommend XXClone. Great free program.

 

Great, well done!

I said it was a good, easy to run program.