HDD Image Clone Question

I need to clone a new Dell HDD that was never booted into Vista and gone through the user setup process. The reason is I want to sell this laptop but need to swap HDD's and have the swapped HDD be exactly the same so it will be completely fresh and new to the user to setup.

The question is: How would I clone the drive (onto an external USB drive) in a DOS type program that doesn't boot into windows, so I don't have to go through the windows setup process? That way the swapped HDD will be restored to the state of non user setup windows.

I wonder if O&O DiskImage 4 would work for this? Any ideas?

 

Pull the drive and mount it as a slave in a second machine, clone it from there.

Be aware--the Dell MBR/PBRs don't always clone correctly, so you may want to clone/image the drive, boot it and set it up to ensure it works, then reclone/reimage it from the orginal/image.

Something about those danged Dell drives ....

Different software has a hardtime cloning the image because of the partition structure and the bootloader that allows for factory restore.

 

Thanks for the help. I don't have a second machine atm. Just a laptop. What would I need to connect 2 SATA drives at once on a laptop. I only have room for 1 but I could just connect it out of the laptop.

 

2.5 disk enclosure that supports sata would do..

fyi--a sata laptop will connect to a desktop sata controller, too--would be more reliable/faster for cloning

 

Maybe you could use something like Clonezilla Live (never used Clonezilla myself) and an external hard drive. I'm thinking maybe you would want to use a sector-to-sector copy. Might want to check my suggestion against other people before you try it, though. Just my idea.