Anyone want to walk me through a hard drive clone?
 

I want to make a one time perfect copy of my hard drive at work. It is old and I worry about it. I back up my most important files but I would like to have a complete copy given the 5-7 years of random data I have on here just in case.

The PC is running Windows 2000

The hard drive is 55.8G NFTS with 14.5G used.

First, what do I need to buy? Can I do this via USB to an external HD?

Do a google search on HDClone, lots of choices. I used to do this, but lately I would rather clean-up/re-install windows.... so I buy a hard drive, re-load windows, and install the old hard drive as a slave, or in the case of my laptop, put it in an inexpensive usb external case.

Takes a little longer, but a clean windows system is much faster, and I am replacing the primary harddrive before it fails.

I have an external HD for my "important" files, you know music, games, videos, etc. It works great. Plug it in when you want to use one of the files and unplug it when your finished. I know that doesn't help ya, but it seems like the previous post was what you need. I would expect that in about a year or 2 (max) you could get a USB flash drive that will have more than plenty of data capacity than you need. They are at 8 GB last I heard.

I don't really want to do a spot backup (certain files). I would like to make an exact copy of my HD so that if I swap it in everything is loaded up and ready to rock exactly as it is today....everything.

Am I correct that a cloned drive would do that?

It should. I haven't done that since windows 95/98 to clone drives for workstations. I used to use a product by Power Quest called Drive Image. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_Image_(software)

edit: found this comparison, may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software

buy a 3.5" external USB hard drive. You may need one that supports USBv1 and v2, depending on the age of your computer. Go to arconis.com and download their trial copy of their cloning software. You should be able to use either True Image or Migrate Easy. The software should 'see' the external drive. Configure your clone options. The computer will probably reboot and begin the cloning process. Just wait a while and you should get a full clone

Thanks

Lendaddy, I use Acronis to make images of my hard drives and it's "point and click" easy. Buy the software and an external USB hard drive at your local BestBuy or wherever and you;re all set...

+1 for Acronis.

+2 Acronis (we even use it in the enterprise)

Is an "image" what I've described?

It is, you could revert back to the gold image at any time.

OK, it's running now. I am a little afraid as when I chose the clone option it said "note that you have to replace the original drive when completed." huh?

So then I chose the backup option which has a "full" option that claims it creates an exact bootable image.

Now that it's running the wording seems odd to me. It describes two steps.

The first is "Create full system backup archive"
"From disk 1 to h:\mybackup.tip"

This makes sense to me on a logical level, data from my original drive to the new drive.

But then...

Step two shows:

"creating partition image"

"Hard disk:1
Drive letter: C
File system: NTFS
Volume label: Drive_C
size: 55.87 GB"

Why doesn't this say what it's doing with that image? Seems like it should say "sending to drive "H:" no?