How to clone vista from 60 GB to 160 GB HD?

[dreamcast87]

I currently have a 60gb in my dell inspiron 640m with vista 32 bit home premium installed (clean install from oem disc) but I want to get a bigger 160gb. I’d like to clone my hard drive with all my data and settings so that I don’t have to re-install the OS and all my programs. Which program can I use to do this? If anyone has any other tips or advice I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

[ND40oz]

Ghost or Altiris can both do it, though I think both require a license. Check out UBCD, I'm pretty sure it has some sort of cloaning software on it.

[tuskenraider]

I currently have a 60gb in my dell inspiron 640m with vista 32 bit home premium installed (clean install from oem disc) but I want to get a bigger 160gb. I’d like to clone my hard drive with all my data and settings so that I don’t have to re-install the OS and all my programs. Which program can I use to do this? If anyone has any other tips or advice I’d greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance. Every drive manufacturer has easy to use software to clone one disk to another. You'll get a disk with the drive or you can download it at their website if an OEM drive.

[DaRkF0g]

I say use Acronis TrueImage. That program does an awesome job. Its totally worth the high price!

[teststrips]

try the FREE program DriveImageXML

[Dually]

You can download a (fully functional) 15 day trial of Acronis TrueImage Home 10 (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

[siliconnerd]

If you want to do it without paying for software, the best tool I have found is GParted. It is a linux boot disk with a nice front end for editing and copying partitions. Just copy over the partition and then resize it to fill the entire disk.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

[Xilikon]

Nobody even suggested the free tool available within Vista... Vista can do a full disk backup (a sort of imaging) so just do this and burn on dvd. Swap the disk (make sure it is virgin) then do a restore. It will retail everything you had.

I did this once when I moved from a Raptor 36 to my spare Caviar 120Gb when I sold it. I will plan to do this again tonight to move back to a brand new Raptor 74.

Another way would be to get a free copy of EaseUs DiskCopy (http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/) and plug both drives then do a sector-by-sector copy. The new drive will have the same partition along with 100 Gb of free space that you can recover by asking Vista to extend the partition or just make a new partition :)

[PGHammer]

Actually, Seagate (SeaTools) and Western Digital (Data Lifeguard Tools) will work under Vista, as does Norton Ghost 2003 and newer (I used Ghost 2003 to clone my WD Caviar SE 80 GB PATA drive to my Maxtor 200 GB SATA drive). The advantage that DataLifeguard Tools and SeaTools have is that both are Windows applications; Ghost 2003 and newer can be *burned* onto a CD which can be booted, and then the cloning done from there.

[game14]

I say use Acronis TrueImage. That program does an awesome job. Its totally worth the high price!
second that ... its absolutly fool proof !!! ;)

[dreamcast87]

Thank you for all your suggestions I've decided on acronis true image I'll update when it's done. Once again thank you.

[ChristO]

Please let me know if Acronis works for you! Everytime I try it will not boot I get an error some file missing, Im not sure if it is a problem with vista 64? same error with ghost

[Roberty]

Acronis true image is the best I've found as well. I have it on a bootable disk and it runs pre operating system so it shouldn't matter what the operating system is. Sounds like something isn't right. Are you sure the hard drive doesn't have bad sectors on it?

[enyceexdanny]

Please let me know if Acronis works for you! Everytime I try it will not boot I get an error some file missing, Im not sure if it is a problem with vista 64? same error with ghost


Some error regarding the configuration files, correct?
Well if so, I got that same error also. The funny thing is, only after I fully upgraded my pc I started getting that.

Certain chipsets don't work correctly with the boot enviornment of Trueimage, which seems to be linux based. The most common chipset being Intel's P35.

Not totally sure, but that seems to be the only logical reason. o.o

[ChristO]

Well after messing with Acronis and Ghost several times I tried the built in tool in vista and it worked like a charm, The harddrive was a seagate 320gb and was making loud screaching noises so maybe the other pograms had probems with errors.

Thanks guys:)