[bustation]

Hi all,

I purchased a new hard drive (Wewstern Digital model WD3200AAKS) to clone my old hard drive from a dell pc (Dell Dimension E510). Western Digital's software (Data Lifeguard tools) tells me that I cannot copy the hard drive because the old one is a "dynamic" hard drive. I guess there is multiple partitions or something like that. I also tried norton Ghost to clone the whole hard drive but it will on clone the C: partition.

My question is whether or not I can copy everything, all partitions, to the new hard drive because I have not been able to do it so far with these two programs.

A secondary question is do I need to or is cloning just the C: enough?

Thanks for any help.

Matt

[crjdriver]

Is the drive really a dynamic disk? To find out, go to disk management. Start>run and type in "diskmgmt.msc" without quotes and hit enter. On the left side of the console, it will say either basic or dynamic disk.

[bustation]

It says basic disk. I wonder why lifeguard tools said it couldn't copy it because it was a dynamic disk?

[saikee]

If the disk has to be bootable then the safest way is to clone the whole disk. It is more reliable to have a target larger than the source disk even Ghost is supposed to be able to shrink it.

[crjdriver]

I use and recommend acronis true image for cloning and backup images. They have a 15 day trial ver you can download however the full version is only $19.99 after MIR.
That price is on newegg.

[bustation]

thanks everyone. I bought Ghost thinking it would clone the whole disk but I guess it won't? Sounds like the only option is to try Acronis True Image, right?

[saikee]

I used Ghost in the early days but changed to Linux because it is simpler and slightly faster. Never looking back since.

Linux is free and involves only one line of terminal command but most important one know exactly what is behind the operation. Cloning can be done in every Linux and, although I haven't tried it, the Unix too because the command Data Dump "dd" is just a kernel command.

The operation involves only reading the binary bits of a specified number of sectors from a disk and write the same on another disk or file. Since the binary bits is independent of the operating system that means any number of operating systems in any combination can be reproduced exactly.

[crjdriver]

Originally Posted by bustation

thanks everyone. I bought Ghost thinking it would clone the whole disk but I guess it won't? Sounds like the only option is to try Acronis True Image, right?

I have used all of the cloning/imaging apps and if you are going to clone a drive, acronis is the best. For imaging backups, I also use Macrium reflect and have found that to be a very good app however it does not do cloning.

[bustation]

As suggested, I ended up using acronis and it worked flawlessly. Thanks for your suggestions everyone.

[crjdriver]

Originally Posted by bustation

As suggested, I ended up using acronis and it worked flawlessly. Thanks for your suggestions everyone.

Acronis is like Snap-On tools; it just works no problems.