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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:
--- Quote from: gman314 on December 21, 2012, 12:03:20 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
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.