Software recommendation

[panteragstk]

I just bought two identical hard drives so I can use RAID0 on my gaming machine. What free drive cloning software have you guys used with success?

[stevech]

Acronis TruImage. It will image to a file or clone.
I clone drive 1 to drive 2 every week or two. I've found it a more prudent scheme than RAID1 because malware and viruses are more likely than drive failure.

I also use low cost SecondCopy - it runs in the background and copies changed files to another drive - watching only my selected really-important folders that I need auto-backed up between cloning.

I've had to use the cloned drive three times in the last 2-3 years due to either windows outlook going berzerk and unrepairable, or twice I've gotten unfixable malware; one the other day just due to Firefox going to a seemingly innocent web page.

I do use RAID1 on my 500GB pair used only for video recordings. Can't say why I don't clone; just haven't.

Cloning the main office PC's SATA 160GB to an identical twin takes about 15 minutes. When things go to crap, I just boot the last clone, then load in the files backed up to USB drive by SecondCopy. Trivial.

I'll never again spend a whole weekend loading windows and applications.

[jdamore]

Acronis is great but unfortunately I owned it for WinXP and with vista you have to upgrade it. I dont really want to purchase it again..

I'm also looking for something free just for cloning. Thanks!

[PAF]

You can you imagex from microsoft which is included in the desktop deployment tools... This tool isn't for "cloning" per se but it will capture a image of the hard drive which you can then use to apply to another hard drive. The great thing is that you can apply the image to the same hard drive the image is stored on because it uses a file based imaging technique, not a sector by sector technique. The tough part is that it is a command line tool so you need a little technical knowledge....

It is free.

the command line to capture an image is...
imagex /capture [Source Drive] [Image File] "[Name]"
so... imagex /capture d: c:\mywinfile.wim "Drive D"

To apply the image... imagex /apply [Image File] 1 [Destination Drive]
so... imagex /apply c:\mywimfile.wim 1 d:\

This thing is about as fast as the old symantec ghost

The damnedest thing is that it is 1GB to download... but it also comes with PE 2.0, if you're into that stuff.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
After you install it... you can just strip the imagex portion which is 20MB and uninstall the rest...

[davephan]

I use Ghost for disk imaging. Acronis TruImage is another option, but both products are not free. If you want a free disk imaging product, you could try using PING, Partition Image is not ghost, http://ping.windowsdream.com/

There are several free disk cloning utilities that usually come with new hard drives that help copying all the data from the old drive to the new drive.

If you want to copy directories, and keep them in sync, you could try using the free Microsoft utility called SyncToy.

I think you need to be a bit more specific what you are trying to do.

Dave

[stevech]

Originally Posted by jdamore

Acronis is great but unfortunately I owned it for WinXP and with vista you have to upgrade it. I dont really want to purchase it again..

I'm also looking for something free just for cloning. Thanks!

Not so for me. It runs on Win 7 just fine.

[stevech]

Disk clone/backup is too important to me to take yet more risk with freeware.

[davephan]

PING, Partition Image is not ghost is freeware, but it does work. I use Ghost because I've owned Ghost since version 3.0, so I normally do not use PING, but it is an option if you don't want to purchase disk imaging software, and if the alternative is to have no image backup. Previous versions of Acronis and Ghost both had recovery problems with previous versions, so even pay imaging software isn't perfect. Ghost did not have extremely reliable recoveries till version 7.0 or later. Acronis had recovery problems in at least one previous version number. Newer versions of Ghost are reliable. I haven't heard of any recent Acronis version with recovery problems. I haven't had recovery problems yet with PING, but I haven't used it a lot.

It is a good idea to test the recoveries too. If you periodically test the recoveries, then you know that the images are good. If you do not have a duplicate computer to test them on, this has some risk in case the recovery fails. I periodically recover my SageTV computer after trying out 'demo' software to completely remove the 'demo' software and to make sure the recoveries are successful. I keep many previous images in case my most recent image is bad. I haven't had a recovery problem in many years.

Checksums of the image files can also help insure the copies of the image files are good to improve recoveries. I had a recovery go bad at work a several years ago, where one image file segment failed the checksum, causing the image recovery to fail. The failed checksum image file was re-copied across the WAN from off-site storage, it passed the checksum test, and the recovery was then successful.

I found that it is also very important to store your image files on hard drives instead of optical media. I have tried recovering from optical media that is a couple years old, which resulted with a failed recovery, even though I had three duplicate copies of the optical media.

If your images are stored on detached hard drives, you should connect and spin up the hard drives periodically, such as every few months. If you store the detached hard drives for years without using them, they may have an increased failure rate when you try using the hard drives in the future.

I have also had long term data retention problems with old diskettes. Diskettes cannot store images because they are too small, but could have very important data stored on them. It is a good idea to copy the data from the diskettes onto hard drives or images of the diskettes onto hard drives if the diskettes are bootable.


Dave

[sandor]

the last windows software i used was Casper, on the Mac i use SuperDuper or Silverkeeper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

[panteragstk]

Thanks for the advice so far. All I am trying to do is copy my vista install to my raid 0 array with my new single platter 160gb drives. I'd rather not mess with purchased software because I only need it for a one time use.

[briands]

Acronis has a free 15 day trial - so that should work for you.

[davephan]

There are some "free" after rebate backup programs at Fry's.

Perfect Image, packaged with Partition Commander is free after rebate. CA Backup & Migration Home Edition is also free after rebate.

Acronis True Image Home Edition is $25 after rebate. Acronis Disk Director 10 is $10 after rebate. I haven't researched the difference between the Acronis products or how reliable rebates are at Fry's. I used to get my Norton Ghost updates either free or for $10 at CompUSA, which had reliable rebates when they were still in business.

http://shop1.frys.com/search?cat=-42736&pType=pDisplay


Dave

[PLUCKYHD]

I use seagates image utility available for free at their website

requires you have one seagate/maxtor drive in the computer but works great and is free.

I believe it is called max blast.