Need new hard drive and help with clonezilla

jordylass

My old hard drive is clicking and can't be found by the bios. It has some things on it I'd like to rescue if possible. I've read about freezing the drive and I'm going to give it a go. I need to buy a new drive to transfer the information to (if it works) and would like some advice on the drive to get.
The existing drive is 250gb it's not full but I think a 1TB would be the best to get now, a 500gb would be the minimum. All of the deals seem to be on external drives which would be OK, but I'd prefer internal.
Any advice on the best VFM drive to get would be appreciated. Also if anyone has experience of using clonezilla and can give a basic idiot guide as it's too technical for me I'd appreciate it.

[Deleted User]

You'll first need to know what interface it is, P-ATA (IDE) or SATA and is it a laptop drive or one for a desktop?

jordylass

Desktop and it's SATA

posted_2

If you are going for a 1TB, try a western digital, seagates/maxtors have a firmware issue atm.

You'll need an internal one, unless you are planning taking it apart. + you'll need one for backup

What make is the one you have? Sometimes a light shake can help - you'll be lucky to be able to clone the existing drive.

mluton

Get a 40GB master drive for OS and a 500GB for data.

jordylass

I have a 160gb which is still in the PC which is the master and was being backed up to the 250 which is bricked. I was also using the 250 for our home video editing and pictures which was stupid, and it's those files I;m hoping to be able to get off.

The drive I have that is broken is western digital WS2500KS

fwor

mluton wrote: »

Get a 40GB master drive for OS and a 500GB for data.

The problem with this approach is that small drives are exceedingly poor value - you would pay maybe a third of the price for a tenth of the capacity.

IMO a better approach would be a pair of 500Gb drives. The main drive with a 40Gb OS partition and the rest a data partition, backing up the main drive to the second one regularly.

I use Clonezilla regularly, and I wouldn't recommend it being used by anyone that can't follow the instructions that it comes with - the fact that it's linux-based can make it very confusing if you're not familiar with the way that disk volumes are named in that OS.

As an alternative I'd suggest using the free 15-day trial version of Acronis True Image.

jordylass

Two 500gb seem like the best option to me. Is Western Digital the best to go for? Can you recommend where to get it.

fwor

Ebuyer, Scan, Play.com, etc all seem to have very similar prices.

For example Ebuyer do a 500Gb, 7200rpm SATAII Samsung (OEM) for just over £39, and a WD similar model is around £42. I've used both makes for a while and not had a problem with either (hope that's not tempting fate...)

[Edit: if your machine is too old for SATA and has IDE instead you'll get a shock - they are now a lot more expensive - e.g. £64 from Ebuyer - presumably because they are now made in small numbers.]

jordylass

It is SATA, thanks ffor all your help. I have Acronis already so will use that to clone the disk. The funcionality of clonezilla seemed better, but beyond me.