Hard drive cloning software

I'm in a position that I need to clone my hard drive to my external, so I can restore it later. I've done some google searching, and there seems to be a lot of software out there.

Any suggestions for which one to use?

Thanks!

 

I don't think you want to CLONE your HD to your external what you want to do is create a complete image of your HD to your external drive. You can restore the image to a new or the same HD at a future date and can store several images of the same drive or different drives at the same time on your external.

If you have Windows 7 installed it has a backup program installed that will create the image and works just fine. Most likely you will now get many suggestions about what software to use from Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost, Easeus, Macrium Reflect, etc. My preference is Acronis True Image but I don't have any complaints with the built in Windows 7 backup software.

 

I like the Acronis products, though the newest one is not so great.

When it goes on sale its worth getting.

However since this is a one time thing for you, you should look at Drive Image XML. Its FREE and I use it at work to backup/restore all our computers and it works just as good as Acronis at that task its just not as user friendly and does not have all the shiny extra features and fancy GUI.

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

 

Thank you for the suggestions. And you are correct, I suppose I don't really want to clone it but more back it up for restoration later.

I'll take a look at the Win7 backup that is included. That just might suit my needs just fine.

 

Careful with the built-in imaging software that comes with Windows 7. It's intended to restore a Windows installation to the exact same hardware including the exact same hard drive! If your drive fails or you replace it with a different drive (e.g, bigger in size), your restore will mostly likely fail with an error. I have experienced this 3 times on 2 different laptops. May I suggest Symantec System Recovery?

 

I have had a much different experience than yours, so it is only fair to report successes also.

Since I had never used the Windows 7 backup software before I wanted to try it out some months ago, I usually use Acronis TI, but heck I am retired so have time on my hands to experiment. Prior to Windows 7 I never had an OS with built in Backup/Restore imaging.

I upgraded my WD 320GB laptop drive to a WD 500GB Blue with no problem. I imaged the WD 320 to an external drive then installed the WD 500GB into the laptop and restored the image to it booting from the System Repair Disk which you can make in W7 to restore an image. Not a single issue.

I used it once again when upgrading my WD 500GB to a new Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm drive. Again, all went smooth with no issues.

I still prefer Acronis TI because the images take up less room on my external drives and I like to have at least two images of each of my four computer HD's stored. Current and previous.

 

Norton Ghost is straight forward and usable(not sure if you actually have to pay for it...probably), but I've only used it on a repair boot disk, never in windows

 

Time yourself using a whole-disk backup/restore program and performing a from-scratch win7 install, all of your programs, and your data.

You might find that there isn't a significant difference in time.

Why? Whole-disk backup programs, at the consumer level, are notoriously slow during backup **and** restore.

I keep copies of the installers for every program I own and/or could conceivably want to use on a DVD and on a flash drive. License keys are kept in a document encrypted with truecrypt.

Once I have Win7 installed, I just install my personal program archive media, and click installer after installer. Doesn't take hardly any time at all.

Win7 installs so damned fast these days (especially from flash media) that for me, a slow whole-disk backup/restore program isn't worth the money it costs nor the time it takes to go through the process.

 

What brand HDs? Most (Seagate, WD and others) offer a free version of Acronis tied to their brand. I have a couple of PassPort drives, and use the WD branded version.

 

I tried this program on the laptop im typing this on. It wont let me choose "C" as a drive to either backup or do drive to drive. I am trying to copy this new Alienware hard disk to my SSD drive before I install it.

 

If you want a free program, I recommend XXclone ( www.xxclone.com/). Just make sure of a few things when you clone. First, make sure your external has the same file system as your original drive (probably NTFS). Next, under Cool Tools, select the "Duplicate Vol. ID" option to make sure you don't have an issue when you restore. Otherwise, Windows will ask you to re-validate. Lastly, select the "Make Bootable" option. Now you can clone away for free and not have to worry about Windows freaking out. Hope this helps.

 

If you go down the imaging route, go with Macrium Reflect Free Edition.

I use Acronis True Image every day in work and Macrium is almost as good - it's perfect for home needs.

 

Now there's a recommendation if I ever saw one.

Having just bought it, I'm reassured.

 

+1 for Acronis True Image

 

I recommend Clonezilla. It's FOSS (unlike everything else mentioned so far ITT) and very capable.