About Disk Cloning....

[Rozal0]

Well I was trying this software that came with my new seagate drive. I am trying to do a carbon copy (clone) to my new disk but it keeps skipping a partition. My windows partition.

On my old disk I have 4 partitions, but when I clone my disk it makes only 3 partitions on the new disk.

How can I prevent this?

[AMD_Gamer]

are you trying to clone from windows to the new harddrive? the software you are using probally does not support that hot imaging or whatever its called.

[Rozal0]

I want to get rid of the old hard drive because it makes a ringing sound that is very annoying. I want to do this without installing windows.

[AMD_Gamer]

I want to get rid of the old hard drive because it makes a ringing sound that is very annoying. I want to do this without installing windows.

you will need clone program that you can boot from, you can try the ultimate boot cd it has several HD cloning tools but i have never actually used them they should work for you http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

or see if you can boot from the cd that came with your harddrive

[Rozal0]

Lots of tools, don't know which are capable of it.

[sabregen]

symantec/norton ghost, acronis true image, drive image

[Rozal0]

Okay, I don't want to backup anything.
I just want to freggin' clone my files onto a new hard drive without re-installing windows.
My windows partition didn't clone when I used the seagate tool.
Partition magic is not compatible with vista.

[GORANKAR]

You will need to boot from the seatools cd or floppies. It can not be run from inside windows. You should be able to clone one drive to another, remove the old drive, and be just fine like that.

Ghost, acronis, and all most the other options offered will work to do this also.

[xX_Jack_Carver_Xx]

Not sure about Vista, you'll have to check with Seagate/Maxtor/WD.... but the generic tool they all use (with thier own userface) does the job under WinXP of cloning your boot drive.

I use Maxblast4 as it knows all about sata and raid, you just have to have a Maxtor product in the system... always pays to have a cheapo $20 disk around for this.

Because of quirks with XP SP2 I have to install on IDE drive, then clone it over to sata raid0, the program works great and is pretty fast.

But not sure if it runs on Vista. My only peeve is it does not let you alter the cluster size when doing a boot disk clone. This whole element of Windows XP or Vista is still in the dark ages, inexcusable for Micro-Soft is the 21st century.

Where is Duck Dodgers when you need him? :eek::rolleyes::p

[Oh4Sh0]

Acronis True Image is probably the most user friendly. I use it all the time at work and love it.

[heelix]

Free, as in beer solution. Give System Rescue a try. Nice writeup on the tool here, more at the download site.

http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/partition-and-image-your-hard-drive-with-the-system-rescue-cd-292972.php