Creating a hard drive image?

[Popcorrin]

I have the computer in my cabinet set up just like I want it, but I want to put a different computer in there.  I don't want to go thru the trouble of setting up all of my files again so I was wondering what the best way to make an exact image of my current hard drive. 
Also when transferring the image to another drive, I assume any drive will work as long as it is larger than the original? 
Someone in the past mentioned norton ghost, but I wanted to see what you guys had to say.

[SirPoonga]

Norton ghost is super easy to use.  I believe the newer versions also allow you to burn your image to dvd directly.

Note, make sure you defrag and such before you image.

[Katana Man]

Yes, Norton ghost is the best. Before Symantech bought Ghost, it used to cost $950 per single user license.  Now you can pick it up cheap.

[Popcorrin]

Thanks for the quick responses! 

[Dire Radiant]

If you're going to put a PC with a different chipset in there, chances are it won't work, depending on which OS you're using. I have heard of people making it work by using device manager to remove pretty much all the system devices then swapping drives but its a kinda hacky approach and leaves the windows registry a mess. Of course when you switch you can simply reinstall your OS but that may break some of your installed programs. Luckily many emulation programs are cross platform and tend to avoid using the registry. Those should work fine.

Personally I'd start with a fresh install. I've done the drive swap thing before and it ended up being more work than a clean install would have been, plus with a new install you'll know your PC is in a good state to begin with.

[SirPoonga]

If you're going to put a PC with a different chipset in there, chances are it won't work, depending on which OS you're using. I have heard of people making it work by using device manager to remove pretty much all the system devices then swapping drives but its a kinda hacky approach and leaves the windows registry a mess. Of course when you switch you can simply reinstall your OS but that may break some of your installed programs. Luckily many emulation programs are cross platform and tend to avoid using the registry. Those should work fine.

Well, if you use XP you shouldn't have a problem.  XP will just use generic drivers.  May need to get newer drivers if hardware is different (ie different video card, etc).
But otherwise it is a perfect snapshot of your hd,so installed programs and registry are exactly the same.

[Bloinkxp]

Before ghosting a Windows 2000/XP machine run sysprep.
This will remove all "custom" PC settings and drivers.  It is a Microsoft utility and the current version is 1.2

We use this when we roll images at the company I work for.

-d

[Katana Man]

Nice tip!  Back in the Win95/98 days, we went into the Device Manager and deleted everything before making the ghost image. After the image was installed on a new machine, Win95/98 would start auto-detecting the devices.

[monkeybomb]

So in terms of size,  Can the second hard drive be smaller than the first if there is room for the data?  Or does it have to be larger no matter what?

[SirPoonga]

It's been awhile since I had to do something like that.  I believe it is possible to make the image the minimum size possible to hold the data.  You'd have to read ghost documentation to find out it's features and capabilities.

However, your harddrive must be no smaller than the size of the image once the image is created.  In otherwords, ghost can create a partition any size with the minimum size being the size of the image file.

[Katana Man]

monkeybomb,
  Yes, hard drive size and partition sizes don't matter with Ghost as long as there is sufficient room to place the data.

[Dire Radiant]

If you're going to put a PC with a different chipset in there, chances are it won't work, depending on which OS you're using. I have heard of people making it work by using device manager to remove pretty much all the system devices then swapping drives but its a kinda hacky approach and leaves the windows registry a mess. Of course when you switch you can simply reinstall your OS but that may break some of your installed programs. Luckily many emulation programs are cross platform and tend to avoid using the registry. Those should work fine.

Well, if you use XP you shouldn't have a problem. XP will just use generic drivers. May need to get newer drivers if hardware is different (ie different video card, etc).
But otherwise it is a perfect snapshot of your hd,so installed programs and registry are exactly the same.

That's what I thought before I tried it too. I went from a VIA KT333 Board to an Nforce 2 and it wouldnt boot into windows. I spent two days messing around with it trying to get it to work before I backed everything up and formatted the drive. I do this stuff for a living and for the life of me I still can't figure out why, but I've tried it twice since and XP doesn't like it at all. I did have some moderate success with transferring a HD between two different VIA chipsets after uninstalling the chipset specific  drivers but it was still kinda messy. In all other cases what I've seen is a blue screen on boot.

[jcrouse]

IMHO, nothing beats a fresh install. If you do otherwise your just asking for problems and stability issues. Most of tha apps we use are self contained in their own folders. Project64 and a couple of others come to mind. Why not just do a MS Backup or a copy of the necessary folders to the second hard drive.

John