Cloning A Drive

[Stuart]

Is there a simple method, or a piece of shareware that allows you to clone a hardrive (Boot sector and all). I want to clone the identical model of hardrive (Western digital 6.4 UDMA).

Thanks in advance

Stuart

[Psychoholic]

Do you have the software that came with the hard drive? Packaged with most of the WD drives I have seen is a disk with EZ-Bios on it to help the computer Bios recognize bigger hard drives. There is an option under Advanced Options that let you copy an entire partion. Won't that do what you're asking?

[Stuart]

No disk, the drive was OEM so it didn't come with any software. You can get the right software from WD called EZ Dive, but they want $24.95 for it. Thanks anyhow.

Stuart

[tantone]

this is probably illegal...but it all came on one 3.5 floppy. Us that program specific to certain HD's? I have a 5.1GB Caviar UDMA and I bought it retail and it came with the disk. You want the info on it? If I copy it and e-mail it to you, would that work?
Lemme know.

tantone@home.com

[Jventrigli]

You dont need any special software, just try this;
if the c dive is the one your going to copy from and the d drive is the new one then in windows open a dos prompt go to c:> and type this command xcopy c: /s/c/h/e/r/k d:
sit back and in about 5min or so it will make an exact cllone of your hard disk c:
make sure you fdisk and format d beforehand no need to use the /s switch w/format
hope this helps

[CMonster]

Jventrigli is absolutely correct..that is a good method and I use it too, although I don't think it will clone the entire drive if there are multiple or extended partitions.

[Gunter Schoeller]

xcopy can't clone your disk !!!!! Buy the Ghost-programm, it's really good and not so expensiv!

[Stuart]

Thanks for all the replies. Just to let you know, Norton Utilities indicated that the SMART status was bad. I checked it with WD's wddiag and it gave the I'm broken and can't be fixed code. The drive still runs, but I guess failure is just around the corner. WD customer service was excellent, I was talking to a real person within a minute, and they are going to send a new drive out before I send the new one in. This gets me the new drive with just a Credit card number and I have 30 days to get the old drive there so I won't be charged.

Thanks again for your help,

Stuart



[This message has been edited by Stuart (edited 02-18-99).]

[NgtCrwlr]

Sturat,

Do not count on WD sending you anything other than the replacement drive, unless you made prior arrangements with WD. I have had three drives replaced and not one came with anything but a drive.

As far as cloning is concerned, if you do not get the EZ-Drive software. You could try the method I have outlined on my site. It is more involved than XCOPY but it has worked for me many times. I had several problems with the XCOPY process.

In addition, I am not sure if it is Win98 or FrontPage but I cannot get FrontPage to work properly with a manual direct copy. The problems prompted me to try QuarterDecks DiskClone Extra Strength. Diskclone worked very well with only one small quirk, it’s not made to clone disks on separate IDE channels. I still made perfect clones but had to use FDISK /mbr to make the clone work properly.

Here is the catch with DiskClone, it has a limit of 8GB. Therefore, if you plan to purchase a drive over 8GB in the future I highly recommend Symantec’s Ghost. Ghost is a better product than Diskclone but it is a lot more expensive. I picked up a package deal of Diskclone ES and PartitionIT ES for $39 (US) and Ghost is close to $100 (US). One great feature of the cloning software packages is they have the option to verify the copy an option that you do not have with XCOPY or the manual direct copy method.

Here is a hint, if all you want is a clone and plan not to use the imaging feature for backups, I would suggest downloading a trial of Ghost. Keep the original downloaded setup file and create a new 3.5-inch work floppy when the 30-day trial expires. You can still make more clones after 30 days, you just won’t be able to read image files created with the first trial copy.

Cheers!

Larry "NgtCrwlr" Mingus
www.makeitsimple.com (http://www.makeitsimple.com)

[bighammer]

last 2 drives from WD took 2.5 months to get to me.
From Sept.18 to Xmas.
Oh we are upgrading our computer?????
last drive I got that wasn't good had a date of August 8th and the new drive I got had a January date. WTF. 1 year of the warranty is gone before I got to put 1 spec of info on the drive.
Although I use WD all the time, their RMA dept. needs quite a bit of work.
Live people are nice, but a drive is better.