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What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

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I have never imaged a HDD before. I recently acquired a Western Digital SATA 500GB HDD. My existing HDD is also a SATA drive. I wish to have the 500GB as the bootable drive and regulate my old 140GB as the bootable backup.

I have read that Drive Image has issues recognizing SATA drives. The imaging software is available at the WD website. On the otherhand, a friend recommended Norton Ghost.

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Clarifications

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

Clarifications

A free alternative…

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

Clonzezilla. Donwload the file and burn it to a CD as an iso image. Attach both the original and new HDD to the computer and then boot the computer from the CD (the CD is bootable).

The most important admonition with any cloning software: Make very sure you understand which is the original HDD and which is to be the clone. If you get this backwards you basically lose everything. The software does not care whether the hard drives have parallel or serial interfaces. If your computer recognizes the drives you can make clones. Be advised that this software uses the linux (not Windows) disk ID system (hda or sda is your original drive; hdb or sdb is your empty drive)

Download Clonezilla here http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

The utility available from WD

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

Is a Acronis Product which is very good and will do all that is requited to just clone the HDD here.

If you want to spend money you can buy a copy of Norton Ghost but it will not be easier or technical better to use though if you have personally used Ghost previously and never used Acronis before you may find Ghost easier to use but that is you personally not any Technical Reason.

Also Clonzilla another Free Utility does a good job and it’s available here

http://download.cnet.com/Clonezilla/3000-2094_4-10976672.html

As to which is better it’s way too personal for me as any of those will do the job being asked though the WD’s version of Acronis and Clonzilla options are free where as Ghost is going to cost you. 😉

Col

more info

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

Acronis is my favorite. Having used the before mentioned products. Ghost is more of a backup software now, and the package comes with two disks, I have run into some issues with it, and the instructions are a little light about cloning. Clonzilla works very well and it is free. I started using Acronis a few years ago. The product just keeps getting better year after year. When purchased you get a year of free updates. The software is very easy to use, and has more features than the others. It gets rave reviews from many sources. WD’s version is a little more streamlined. As a tech I clone quite often, either moving to a new drive or preparing to work on an infected drive.

Ever tried Farstone ?

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

Farstone has complete solutions. One of their advantages is the simplicity and the built-in universal restore, or ability to restore to a different computer (yes other brand, other model).
At this very moment you can have a three user version for $ 76.49.
Look at http://www.dataconsult.eu/producten/farstone.html
As for any image backup software, test it in your specific surroundings !

Why bother to DIY?

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

My nearly-full HD was hampering my work on several photographic projects. After several hours of researching imaging software, I elected to take a simpler approach and scheduled a bit of work at a local–and very good–computer shop where I’ve had work done before. 5-hour turnaround. New (and fast) 500g HD, plus a quick fix to my built-in card reader. Total cost of the new drive and labor, $94.16, plus I had an enjoyable day, mainly out of doors, doing fun stuff instead of sitting in front of my computer. Well worth the money.

CLONING

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

I use Ghost to clone HDDs I have found on some SATA system you need a flash drive with ghost on it (2003 works best) if your not Technical go with Owen Glendower post if you make a mistake and you don’t know how to recover you will be lost. I hope you made two backups before you start

I like PING

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

I have been using PING (http://ping.windowsdream.com/) for about two years and love it. Download, burn ISO (or USB stick). boot, copy go. I do entire labs with it. A 10Gb image burns from a USB drive to a bare metal computer in about ten minutes, depending on the computer.

With that I use GParted (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/) for partition changes. Works like a dream.

Follow carefully what dldorrance said. Know what your are copying and where. Go slow the first time with a note pad and no distractions. Copying over what you wanted to move is not recoverable in most cases.

Fog Service

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

The Fog Service is a great imaging solution that is open source and runs on a linux OS usually Unbuntu, it does a computer lab of 30 computers in at least an hour.

freeware

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Try XXclone.
No need for ISO’s

Driveimage XML, works too

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

I like drive image XML myself (freeware), along with some of the others listed

Top 10 Best Disk Imaging Software

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Listed in order is 2012’s Best Disk Imaging Software
To read the full comparisons and reviews, provided is a link below.

http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

1. Acronis True Image
2. Paragon Drive Backup
3. Norton Ghost
4. O&O DiskImage
5. Image for Windows
6. FarStone Total Recovery
7. R-Drive Image
8. Paragon Partition Manager
9. Macrium Reflect
10. Active@ Disk Image

More info:
http://www.kace.com/products/systems-deployment-appliance/features/disk-imaging.php

You can also try for free till Sep. 10. 2013 Acronis True Image 2014-Beta

In reply to What is a good, easy to use disk imaging software

You can also try for free till Sep. 10. 2013 True Image 2014 by Acronis-Beta and the top 10 beta users will receive Commercial licenses for Acronis True Image 2014. It is a “Beta” so IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED on your main partition with all important data on it, maybe a secondary partition just to make sure is something you’ll like to keep as a full steady version-when it comes ready for download. This info is for your consideration, I own multiple licenses of True Image 2013 and I am pretty satisfied with the main results for cloning/ghosting but as far as backup I use EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation 5.8x ahead of Paragon Hard Disk Manager 12 Professional-which gave me some issues.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/beta/atih2014.html

Macrium Reflect

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Ghost worked great for me for many years, to create an image of the C drive onto a DVD, then restore the DVD image to another computer. But it no longer worked with Windows7. I tried many of the free ones, but the only one that worked for my purpose is Macrium Reflect. I use the Hirens v15 boot CD, boot into Mini XP, then open Macrium Reflect.

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