Cloning/Ghosting a hard drive?

[gman314]

I am looking to backup my arcade's drive in case of a crash (this already happened to me a few months ago, and it was a lot of work to getting things back to normal again). 

I have a 256gb SSD and would like to transfer all it's contents (OS and all of its settings as well) onto a 500gb HDD.  In the event that my original drive crashes, I want to be able to hook up the backup and have everything boot up exactly like the original.  Is this called cloning (as opposed to ghosting)? 

I know that there is a program called Norton Ghost.  Will this program do what I have described above?  I've also contacted numerous PC places.  The price range varies from like $60 to almost $200.  The $200 guy said that he would verify the contents of the drive, but this seems way too much.  Any advice?  Thanks.

[BadMouth]

If one of them is a Western Digital drive, you can use the WD edition of Acronis for free:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119
It's super simple to use.


There used to be another program for Seagate called Maxblast.
The name may have changed by now.
(it started out for Maxtor, then Seagate took them over)

EDIT: Looks like the Seagate one is called DiscWizard
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/
I have never used it.

[HaRuMaN]

Clonezilla, all the way.  Works with any drive, has tons of options.  It's free.

One of the main features I like is it allows to clone a smaller source drive to a larger target drive.

http://clonezilla.org/

[gman314]

The source drive is a 265 gb Samsung 830 series SSD, the destination drive is a 500 gb Western Digital Black HDD. 

I might give Clonezilla a try, but it seems a little confusing to me.  I have never attempted anything like this before and am nervous about screwing up my system.  Also, I have been reading all sorts of stories about people being unable to boot their new drive after the cloning process.  All that I want is a physical HDD that is identical to the current one that I am using.

[HaRuMaN]

The source drive is a 265 gb Samsung 830 series SSD, the destination drive is a 500 gb Western Digital Black HDD. 

I might give Clonezilla a try, but it seems a little confusing to me.  I have never attempted anything like this before and am nervous about screwing up my system.  Also, I have been reading all sorts of stories about people being unable to boot their new drive after the cloning process.  All that I want is a physical HDD that is identical to the current one that I am using.

Clonezilla makes an identical drive.  I've used it when upgrading PC's to larger hard drives, always has worked like a charm, it's like the original hard drive is in there.

[RandyT]

I've used the free version of Macrium Reflect in the past, and it worked great.  It even has the ability to mount an image and access files directly from it.  Lots of compression options, etc...

[spoot]

Clonezilla is your friend as it handles many formats too.  Used it last night to upgrade to bigger ssd drive.  Will do again on another machine tonight.

[juggle50]

I'd be interested in this too. If you change your processor will it still work?

[Gray_Area]

Clonezilla, all the way.  Works with any drive, has tons of options.  It's free.

One of the main features I like is it allows to clone a smaller source drive to a larger target drive.

I think Acronis can do this, too, but I haven't tried it. Acronis has worked great for me, and it's pretty straightforward, but Clonezilla being open-source gives me the idea it might be set up even easier.

For separate drives, versus partitions on a drive, make sure you know your hard drive names. Not letters designations, but the name on the drive itself.