What I use day to day, is a SATA/IDE to USB adapter. You can plug in 2.5",3.5" and 5.25" drives. Take the drive out of the old laptop, hook it up to the device and copy away. For cloning, I use an actual desktop that I attach either two laptop drives or two IDE/SATA drives. I use Norton Ghost to image drives and recover drives with bad sectors. I have access to all cloning/copying programs, but Ghost is easy and just works.

The device is similar to this:
http://shop2.outpost.com/%7BZw2Lrt8wQFuT-JnZ5MFqlA**.node2%7D/product/5370158;jsessionid=Zw2Lrt8wQFuT-JnZ5MFqlA**.node2?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1204768031.gif