Hard Drive Clone/Backup
 

I know this has been talked about here before:

I just got a new HD for my Lenovo laptop, went from 80 to 250gb, the Lenovo has a rescue and recovery program installed where you can backup everything on your HD to DVD's which I did then install them on the new HD which I did, makes a boot disk and all. All worked great.

But now I want to do the same to my desk top computer, any free programs out there or how do I clone the HD to a new HD, need everything, operating system and all.

Not free (at least the full version), but Acronis "True Image" is the best HD clone/revovery software IMO.

Ghost be Norton

If you do clone make sure you deactivate any Adobe product (adobe reader excluded). Photoshop for example, keeps track of your hardware and will complain when you run the app on the cloned drive.

Check you PM.

Yea I had to reload my photo shop:mad:

Yea, I need to do this too. I did the Acronis free thing but I am not confident in what I did.

I want a 100% identical "bootable"hard drive. I will pay for software but I want to be able to boot from it and have the exact same computer. Is this easy?

Sorry to hijack.

Very easy. Just be aware of Adobe products. The proper way to save an Adobe installation is to deactivate it from the old hard drive first.

What do you mean by deactivate? Is Acronis the way to go?

The other question is I bought a USB HD and I am wondering if I can partition it to make maybe five rotating bootable clone drives within it.

When you install and Adobe prouct (most products today), they register themselves on install - "Would you like to activate this product online". When you install an Adobe product, it profiles your computer and sends an inventory of your computer when you activate the product. When you clone the drive and then launch Adobe on the cloned drive, Adobe checks your hardware against its profile. If it detects a new hard drive, it says that system settings have changed and that you need to enter in the serial number again. It can be a pain in the rear!

To deal with Adobe products, you have to first run the program on the old setup (hard drive). For Photoshop CS3, go to Help->Deactivate... It will ask if you are sure and that if you deactivate, you will need to reactivate later (much like when you first installed the program).

Acronis is fine. I personally use Norton, but that's what I am used to.

The short question is:

Do use use any Adobe products other than Adobe Reader? If yes, than you need to deactivate the programs. If no, then don't worry about it!

slodave is the man....follow his instructions.

I use Acronis TrueImage backup and it has never failed me...

For what you want to do, I'd recommend Clonezilla. More specifically, Clonezilla Live. This is a LiveCD that you can download and burn. Then, you can boot from the CD and create an image of your drive on another device (USB drive for example). This is FOSS, so the price is right.

We use Clonezilla with DRBL to maintain and deploy images across the network. It is a very powerful tool, yet simple to use.

True Image or Ghost (I have used both)

There was a gotcha with thinkpads, you had to put the new HDD in the notebook and ghost into it, not the other way around (something about the HDD controller). The newer ones I don't think there is a problem.

If it's Win7, you can just use the built-in backup if you have a place to put the image.

Control Panel - System and Security - Backup and Restore

Thanks to the recommendations from the guys on the other thread. I got a Western Digital 2Tb USB drive for about USD$110 and a friend gave me a copy of what they use at his work on a CD. I booted off the CD which loaded "Mini Windows XP" and ran Ghost. It did an image backup of the complete hard disk onto the USB drive. I'll store it and the boot disk off-site. The mini XP was good because it had USB support and didn't need to load any Vista files, so no files "in use" and therefore missed during backup up.

I think many of the drive manufacturers bundle the new drive with a cd which will do what you seek, but you need to have that type end drive. I have Maxtor and Seagate software that I have used.

Anyone else just boot to linux and do a dd?

what OS ??

Win 7 has something like this built in

Craig, I just did this with a 500GB Seagate from Best Buy(~$80 I think).
Ovedue insurance for the 8yo box.

The Seagate Baraccuda came with a disk which has the exact cloning software(a little difficult to locate initially tho). Transfered WinXP with no problems.
You have to make sure you set up the new drive correctly(partition and boot), so be careful during the setup.

It required an extra power cable, but thankfully there was a spare set of of hd attachment screws to hold it in place from the mfr.

Put the new hd on the data chain, hard drive in place, use cd softeware, wait a few hours for transfer, remove old hd, boot from new hd like brand new, done.

I also used a couple cans of duster to clean the dust out. Be careful with these because they will spray liquid if shaken or tilted in any way.
Static can be a problem. I wet down the carpet, pants, and socks and left it plugged in with the power off.