Clone entire hard-drive as backup ?

forcedv

I have my Windows PC exactly as I want it, but recently it's started to make noises during startup and I guess the hard drive it's going to fail soon.

I have a spare (new) hard drive and want to make a fully functional exact copy of my present system, so I can simply swap drives should this one fail.

Is it possible and how ?

forcedv

Forgot to mention, it's Windows XP.

Red_Rose_Exile

Have a read of this 9 page article on how to Clone XP, using paid for and freeware applications

forcedv

Thanks for the info.

What the best 500GB IDE Hard drive deal at the mo ?

isofa

Do a search on https://www.froogle.co.uk

and have a look at dabs for some initial specs/prices...

SwissLe

http://eu.acronis.com/

My media server gets backed up each week automatically with the above software - saved my bacon twice now!

letsbehonest

norton Ghost

miketaylor

I wouldn't follow that article, instead download and burn a copy of GParted, power off your computer, stick the new HD in and reboot with the CD you made in the drive.

Go for auto configuration and as its a live CD it will take a while to load, when it finally does load (having selected your languages etc), its as simple as compying and pasting all the partitions from the first hard drive to the second. You probably have 1 or two partitions, and they appear in rows - just right click on one, then copy and paste it into the other hard drive (top right drop down menu changes hard drives). Do this for all your partitions, and them resize them (if ou want your main one to be bigger).
You them click 'apply all operations' and wait (a very long time) whole it all gets done.

Then take out the old hard drive, put the new hard drive where the old one was and you should be done.

Blacksheep1979

first check that you need a new hard drive - download a copy of maxtors maxblast (from their website) or your hd manufacturers own such program to check if the hd is failing. Bit of an expense for nothing if it's not the hd.

bainy

Another vote here for Acronis True Image Home http://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ straight forward to use and very quick. I perform weekly incremental back-ups and full monthly backups of my entire network with ease.

As for a 500gb IDE hard drive, heres a good deal from ebuyer: -

Seagate ST3500630A 500GB 7200.10 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM priced at £69.99.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127212

Why Seagate, well because they are quality drives with an unbeatable 5 year warranty should anything untoward happen.

basill

If you buy a Seagate what about using Seagate`s diskwizard to clone the drive, a free download from the Seagate website. It is `powered by` Acronis.

B