Drive imaging - best app for Windows?

ShaunH

On my Mac I use a program called Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate the contents of one drive onto another.

What is the best Windows equivalent to use for this purpose? I don't want to copy files using Windows Explorer as it takes forever and a day. I'm thinking maybe a DOS command like XCOPY? Unless someone can tell me of a more elegant, GUI based solution?

Thanks.

closed

xcopy can't copy open files(shadow copy can), but will copy data, the same as windows explorer, the speed is limited by the (usb) interface/media you are copying to.

to image properly, you need something like macrium reflect free, acronis trueimage etc

bluesnake

copy files or clone disk? Clonezilla, freefilesync, and driveimage xml

any get caught out with a missing boot sector. Test afterwards.

paddyrg

Is Casper available for Windows? Worth a try, after all it is the 'friendly Ghost'

ShaunH

Thanks for the replies. It's for a NAS drive, I need to copy the contents of it onto a normal USB hard drive which I use for backup purposes.

Would rather it be cloned rather than compressed into an image as such. Is that something Acronis TrueImage can do, because I got a CD here with it on (was bundled software with something I bought ages ago but I never used it).

Oblivion

ShaunH wrote: »

Would rather it be cloned rather than compressed into an image as such. Is that something Acronis TrueImage can do, because I got a CD here with it on (was bundled software with something I bought ages ago but I never used it).

Acronis certainly seems to have a good reputation and can Clone. If you have a Western Digital disc, WD have a free download of Acronis to use with their discs ...

http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

sillygoose

I back up my NAS to an external USB drive (kept in a fire safe normally) using a freeware program called EZBack-it-up

http://www.pcworld.com/product/946522/ezback-it-up.html

You create a backup job by simply picking into a list the folder you want backed up, in my case all of them, then give the job a name, that's it.

The program can be set to run in two modes, the 1st is the one I use where anything you since deleted from the NAS also gets deleted from the USB drive copy. The other mode leaves those files alone and just adds any new/updated ones.

So when the named backup is run it checks all the files and subfolders and recreates a copy of the structure and files on the target drive. If the backup has been run before it compares first and then only copies files that are new or have been changed since last time, also updating any folder changes.

Simple couple of clicks, job done. Presents a logfile after of what its done.

closed

xcopy x: y: /s/e/d/c/h - don't really need 3rd party software for external drive to external drive unless you want to sync later

thor

closed wrote: »

xcopy can't copy open files(shadow copy can), but will copy data, the same as windows explorer, the speed is limited by the (usb) interface/media you are copying to.

to image properly, you need something like macrium reflect free, acronis trueimage etc

What can macrium and trueimage do that xcopy and windows explorer can't? Apart from open files are there other ones that xcopy can't copy?

prowla

When I bought an SD drive I used Macrium Reflect to image my OS onto it.
It did the boot sector as well and allowed me to resize the target C: drive.