Disk Cloning

I have a hard drive i want to clone. I have Ghost 7.0 and downloaded the trial of ghost 7.5 which provides USB support...or is supposed to. I also have a demo of R-studio but restoring an image does not appear to be an option.

Is there any other disk cloing software (besides drive image) that does a good job without jumping through hoops? thank you!

 

I like Instant Recovery but I also have and use Drive Image 2002.

Both work easily. Drive Image is more versatile whereas Instant Recovery is faster at burning cd's and offers lifetime free phone support. (I've never needed it though)

You pays yer money and takes yer choice. Instant Recovery is a bargain. It costs half what Drive Image does. They also make some other very good products so check that site out thoroughly.

 

thank you ...will give IR a try!

 

I should point out that IR absolutely requires a min. of 64 megs of RAM. It won't load using less and you'll wonder why.

Good luck.

 

Another thing I will add, if you're running Win9X, you can use XXCOPY for cloning. Get it here Install it and use the command line XXCOPY /CLONE C:\ X:\ where C:\ would be your source drive and X:\ would be your intended target for the clone.

Be warned that all data on the target drive will be lost and replaced with the source data. You would expect that, right? Some people have lost data that way by carelessly entering the wrong source or target information or transposing them. Big disaster when you do that.

Incidentally, I use XXCOPY for running incremental backups. The same /clone switch does that as well. I changed the command line to:

XXCOPY /CLONE C:\ F:\backup\ so I can use the remainder of the drive for other things. Works great, takes quite a while the first time, since all files are being copied, but thereafter, it completes in less than 2 minutes since it's doing incremental additions only. Great free software!

It will produce a bootable clone of any Win 9X drive but doesn't do that well in XP. I still use it though since what it doesn't copy in XP is active system files and I still get all my user data and program files. Still very handy!

Cheers.

 

clone disk

wow...now we're talking...and I'm glad you mentioned that it would wipe out the drive! And I have an empty partition I created in which to create another o/s...

Now once the xxcoy is completed to the partition can it be used to copy back to the new hard drive? I'm installing a new hard drive on a lap top and cannot have two connected at once...or else ghost would have worked disk to disk.

thanks again!

 

You're welcome. Later, you may want to add the /yy switch after the clone switch so you don't have to confirm all the overwrites.

XXCOPY /CLONE /YY C:\ E:\

or in the other application

XXCOPY /CLONE /YY C:\ E:\BACKUP\

XXCOPY is a very useful and powerful piece of software. Do be sure you understand what you are asking it to do before going forth. If in doubt, post it and get opinions.

In the instances I have cited, upon the first invocation, it will copy all the files on the source to the target. If you run either of the commands subsequently, it will merely update any changed files and DELETE any that are present on the target but not on the source. It's important to understand that concept. Incremantally updating each time.

Cheers.

 

I see I missed your last question. My apologies.

I have never tried xxcopying to another partition and then xxcopying to the root of another bootable drive but I don't see that it would be any problem. If the new drive is bootable, you should be able to get it booted into the OS you cloned to it. I would like to hear of your progress since I may never get to try that myself.

While I'm at it, I'll mention another useful aspect of XXCOPY that I use to some advantage. I run the clone operation prior to installing software. Then I run it again immediately afterwards. Since I don't supress the screen content with any @echo off command in my batch file, the second run will display any newly copied file on screen so I have a good idea what files have been added by any program. Sometimes this can be very useful.

Cheers.

 

Just a little more info re xxcopy , which I also use .

Below applies if you want to make the new hard drive your main drive ( usually C )
http://members.tripod.com/~diligent/harddisk.htm
Use the startup disk to boot the computer and when you are at the A:\
prompt type sys c: and press Enter. The required boot information will
be copied to the new disk and you have a working copy of the old hard
disk .
If the partition is not active , use fdisk , option2 .

 

cloning and xp service pack 1

If you are using xp be carefull about upgrading with "service pack 1 ". In microsoft's lit they make the point that the "isssue of cloning has beem dealt with" inservice pack 1.
Just out of interest. How much media does it take to back up a hard drive with a ghosting program.

thanks

 

Hi jmatt, I'm glad you also put xxcopy to use. Thanks for the link. I'll read it over later and try to learn something.

schamish, I haven't read anything about MS "Dealing with cloning" and wonder what that references. I'm guessing it deals with Sysprep specifically.

As to media required to ghost an image, the general rule is 70% of your data on disk. It does depend on the type of data you have. Some files are already compressed (eg, jpg's and .zip's) and won't get reduced in size but there are others that shrink more than 50% so it averages out at that. When I use Drive Image 2002, my 4.3 Gigs of data is placed in a file that's 2.9 Gigs. That's rendering it out at 2/3 the full size so that may be a good figure to use in general. btw, That's using the highest compression available in Drive Image.

Regards.

 

you ALL have been most helpful. your help and expertise is greatly appreciated. all the books in the world can't replace the personal touch in how "stuff" works.

anyway, I am putting the laptop on my network and i'm going to use ghost. I am definitely going to be using xxcopy later on and of course if ghost doesn't work it might be the xxcopy. will let you know. thanks again.

 

I give up on Ghost already. I'm spending way more time than the project is worth to me. moving on to xxcopy. tell me and this may be dumb but once i use xxcopy to copy data to a network drive and attach the new hd don't i need to install the O/S first to connect and then do the xxcopy in reverse? thanks.

 

You're plowing new ground as far as my experience is concerned.

If I were to attempt what you are, I would use the following command for the first step:

xxcopy /clone c:\ X:\backup\

That should get the entire contents of your c:\ drive copied to the folder named Backup on your target drive.(change the X: to reflect your target drive designation) Incidentally, this will preserve any other files/folders you may have on the target drive since I added the Backup folder in the command line. You may notice the win386.swp file will not be copied but not to worry.

Then when I had the new drive installed and formatted, I would run the following command:

xxcopy /clone X:\backup\*.* C:\

That should copy the material back to the new drive but drop the Backup folder from the hierarchy.

Reboot when copying finishes and the drive should boot to Windows (If it was doing so when you copied it).

As I say, this is new territory for me but I think it should work that way.

Any ?

 

Hi pccoach & Zephyr , refer my post .

Once everything is copied you need to make it bootable . ( sys c: )

Then you disconnect the old hard drive & boot up with your boot disk in ( no cd rom support ) & do the fdisk thing .

Take out the boot disk & reboot .

 

wow...quick response. you did reply that earlier. thanks!

 

I'm doing the xxcopy from a laptop to another computer on my network. once the data is copied to the computer on the network i'll have the new hd in the laptop. i know i need a boot disk...how do I reattach the new hd to the network? So much for helping out a friend!

 

I hadn't considered that aspect but now that you mention it I would think you'll need to install an OS and configure networking on the new drive. That's my WAG so take it for what it's worth. My networking experience is mostly confined to using them as opposed to setting them up.

Once you get connected into the network again, the xxcopy command should do the job but you'll likely have some work left afterwards since it may not copy some of the active files that you have open for networking. That shouldn't be too big of an obstacle though.

Perhaps you are up to speed in that area or some others here can help.

 

just saw that xxcopy pro has the ability to do what i want..plus a free trial. will let you know. thanks again.

 

Good luck with it! Let me also tell you about the xxcopy Yahoo group that is free to view and/or join. The actual creator (Kan Yabumoto)of this product participates and there are several other very knowledgeable people there. I would advise you to post up your plans and see what they tell you.

Cheers.