Need help making a Exact image of my Hard Drive which includes the OS

Hi guys got a question, I built a Digital pinball machine about 6 months ago and finally got it setup perfectly with over 100 tables on it. I have a 64 gig SSD drive in one partion c: that includes the OS and everything else, I bought another 64 gig SSD drive and want to make a exact copy so if the Drive fails I can just unplug it and put the backup in and turn the machine on and not miss a beat. I've looked at Acronis but I've heard that I may need to make a copy if the drive in Dos because you can't copy it while running windows, is that true? Thanks for your help guys, here is a vid of the pinball table in action, it's a 3 moniter setup running Hyperpin as the Frontend, tables are all visual pinball. Pc is a q6600 , 12 gigs of ram , windows xp 64 bit, 2 NVidia gtx 260s , 42 inch lg led for the playfield, Westinghouse 32 for the Backglass and a old 15 inch moniter for the DMD, 10 in sub and a Alpine amp driving the speakers, shaker motor, 5 LEDs, 1 Ipac for the buttons and 1 led wiz for the lights. Here's is one of many Videos I got up, and before someone asks I got about $4k into this lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG4uioLCYpk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

DD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

$trider said:

DD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

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Ok that looks more intimidating then it really is after reading all that I think lol.

Acronis would be the easiest, you can either install it or just have it burn you a bootable CD that will allow you to make a full backup to the location of your choosing.

I use Acronis myself. Works really well. Has a lot of little features here and there that are quite useful.

The "free version" of Acronis is called CloneZilla. It isn't too bad to use, but Acronis is definitely nicer with the slick GUI.

parted magic. Super easy. It just boots up from a CD or USB stick and you use clonezilla to clone the drive.

http://partedmagic.com

I use clonezilla for a while now and it's super easy to be honest. I don't know why you would need a fancy GUI for something as basic as a clone from 1 to 2. Recommending: CloneZilla.

I just upgraded from a 64gb SSD to a 256gb. Used Macrium Reflect to clone and the 256gb came up fine (though I had to extend the partition after). So that is another option. Though I've always heard good things about Acronis as well.

Thanks guys! I used Clonzilla and it worked like a charm, I can sleep better now that I have a working backup.

Glad it worked out for you.

bbenz33 said:

Glad it worked out for you.

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Thanks BB!