Imaging harddrive.

[Chrissirhc]

I want to take my 4GB harddrive copy it to another drive (20GB) and make the other drive the main drive for the system. Can I simply copy the files in windows swap the drives over afterwards and then reboot?

OR will I have problems with the boot sector of the 20gb drive.

Are there any small (in file size) utility programs that do this?

 

[ngagne]

Norton's Ghost can do this, Partition Magic can (I think). Both programs are around $30 but well worth it. Nate Gagne
nathan.gagne@verizon.net
AKA Nick Burns - Your Company's Computer Guy
"Would you like me to save your game of Minesweeper first?"

Like my post? Let me know it was helpful!

 

[hyperionsix]

I clone drives often and in the manner you wish (Smaller to larger drive). Ghost is the easiest and surest method for this. It takes (on average) less than thirty minutes from beginning to end.

 

[Chrissirhc]

Thanks thats exactly what I want to do. I take it partition magic doesn't offer as good or same facilities as this?

Cheers

Chris

 

[torque2k]

Partition Magic doesn't image, it's a partitioning tool only (but it rocks). If you need drive copying software, either use Symantec's Ghost or Power Quest's Drive Image (or Deploy Center for corporate use). Both are great packages, but if you're going to image over a network, Ghost has the leg up.

I use Deploy Center (a multi-user version of Drive Image with many admin options over the network) to do backups of user PCs when they come into the shop for tweaking/cleanup/repair. I plug in an extra drive, and instead of doing a drive COPY, I create an IMAGE FILE, break it into 650MB pieces, and then back the pieces up to CD and put the CDs in the user's PC file folder for safe-keeping. It's saved my butt more times than I can count!

Don't forget, though, to check your jumper settings before installing the 20GB drive as the new main drive...

Dan

 

[Chrissirhc]

Okay I may be jumping ahead but if I do do an image, what will happen to the free space on the new harddrive, will it just be unpartitioned space?

 

[torque2k]

Can't speak for Ghost, but I assume it's the same result as Drive Image: the program will automatically format out the rest of the drive to one partition, so it'll be just like you copied the contents to the new drive from the old one. Drive Image takes care of the formatting as well. You have the option, however, of creating multiple partitions in the free space...

As for the format of the main partition, Drive Image formats it in the same file system as the one you're copying from. If you have a 4GB FAT32 drive, the 20GB drive will be FAT32 also.

Dan