Drive imaging suggestions

DatabaseError

I have several PCs (as some of you know )...but I'm running out of storage space3...800Gb just doesn't cut it nowadays

So...as I've been on a mini spending spree (won $500 a couple of days ago ) I've bought some coolers (1xgpu + 2xcpu...can't justify a HDD )...so PCs are gonna be it bits....sooooo...

My plan is to discretely swop a 300GB ide HDD (full, no OS!) with my son's 500Gb SATA...which has vista 64 on it....and bags of free space..

..so...what's a good imaging program for an x64 OS? I want to transfer the complete contents of the 500gb drive to the 300 (there WILL be lots of space)

...first I'm gonna go and tuidy the 300Gb drive...some of this stuff HAS to be rubbish!

fwor

DatabaseError wrote: »

My plan is to discretely swop a 300GB ide HDD (full, no OS!) with my son's 500Gb SATA...which has vista 64 on it....and bags of free space..

You mean you're nicking 40% of your son's hard drive space and not telling him???

Acronis True Image Home 2009 free trial should do the dirty deed for you. From the specs it should work with any version of Vista.

DatabaseError

fwor wrote: »

You mean you're nicking 40% of your son's hard drive space and not telling him???

NO! I'm ...er........I'm just going to .....er....



he's only 10 - he won't notice (and I'm sure I won't notice the 16mb cache drive in my pc )

timbim_2

If you're happy to use the linux command line, try System Rescue CD. You need to mount the drives you want to copy to first, but that shouldn't provide too much of a challenge for someone as competent as you. :rolleyes:

gaming_guy

Clonezilla?

i'd say that you would at least have to save some experience of messing around with linux as clonezilla is based on debian. (Its a live cd btw)

DatabaseError

Absolutely NO linux experience...

just had a quick look at clonezilla - not for me

I want "copy drive 1 to drive 2 >>GO"

I'll have a look at the true image trial...see if there are any restrictions..

asininity

Damn I was gonna suggest clonezilla.

timbim_2

The system rescue cd approach is really very easy, you can boot into a graphical environment and do it fairly easily from there. It's just a case of using the mount command, as in

mkdir /mnt/dest
mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/dest

Then you start partimage and use it's dos-like wizard to do the copying. Really quite simple. Plus, SysRescCD is useful to have if a system won't boot for any reason, I think it's even got a rootkit checker in there. Gparted helps if you ever need to do any partition management outside windows.

One thing whichever way you go, run a couple of defrag passes before cloning, it really helps.

DatabaseError

timbim wrote: »

The system rescue cd approach is really very easy, ....
La, la, la, ladi, didi, la.....

One thing whichever way you go, run a couple of defrag passes before cloning, it really helps.

fixed it for you, Tim

I loved DOS, and mourned the end of the command line....now I realise I just want to press buttons and for things to work..which, in windows, 99.9% of the time things do

...by the same token...when I put on my oven I don't want to rub sticks together first


...but thank you

..currently copying 33k files
(backup prior to tomorrows clone)

timbim_2

I promise you it's not hard. If you're familiar with DOS, it shouldn't be a problem, most of the stuff you need to do is windowed anyway. In fact, if you're simply copying off a smaller volume to a bigger one, you could use the fully graphical Gparted to copy then grow the partition. For swapping down size, you can shrink to minimum size, then copy and grow to fill.

What's the latin in your sig? Should know, did GCSE latin last year, but I've already forgotten most of it!

DatabaseError

timbim wrote: »

What's the latin in your sig? Should know, did GCSE latin last year, but I've already forgotten most of it!

May faulty logic undermine your entire philosphy.

taken from here. There were ones I'd rather have used...but I thought I'd best be polite
...though nobody seemed offended at my last one...


you did GCSE LATIN last year?? Are you after a career as a 17th century monk?