Best Hard Drive Cloning tool

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[H]ard|Gawd
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I need to run one of my machines off a USB drive temporarily.

I've tried cloning my IDE drive to my USB drive with CopyWipe but Windows XP doesn't boot correctly. It keeps freezing at bootup with a BSOD (even in booting to Safe Mode it freezes when loading the Mup.sys file).

Is there another Hard Drive cloning program out there that won't give this problem?
 
I take it you're using a USB 2.0-to-IDE adapter, but what kind of USB drive (make/model) are you using? It states CopyWipe provides a convenient method to create and maintain a complete hard drive mirrored backup. So my guess is something about the drive you're using is what's causing the problem.
 
Actually looking more into it, it seems like its an issue with the MBR. With an exact copy of the hard drive, the MBR isn't matching what Windows thinks the MBR should be.
 
I use Acronis True Image.
It allows you to make live Windows backups to a file on another drive/partition.
burn this to disk if needed.

You can restore images to another drive while in Windows or use the program to create a boot disk.
Use the boot disk to restore an image saved to DVD-R or on another hard drive.
The boot CD can read NTFS volumes so it has no trouble getting at the images.

It has an option to restore the MBR but you shouldnt ever need it when restoring an image, only if you get a MBR foulup.


To clean your MBR, boot from a DOS disk and type
FDISK /MBR

You will no longer be able to boot the drive but you can now replace the Boot Record without corruption.
 
Your hard drive manufacturer probably offers a free utility that clone drives, including adjusting partitions sizes during the clone.

I've used free utilities from WD and Maxtor as well as Actronis TI10. Same functions, same speed and never a failed clone.
 
so if I want to take the 80 out of my laptop i can clone it to the new drive and swap them out and just boot into new drive as if nothing changed? what tool is best for that?
 
Nenu said:
I use Acronis True Image.
It allows you to make live Windows backups to a file on another drive/partition.
burn this to disk if needed.

You can restore images to another drive while in Windows or use the program to create a boot disk.
Use the boot disk to restore an image saved to DVD-R or on another hard drive.
The boot CD can read NTFS volumes so it has no trouble getting at the images.

It has an option to restore the MBR but you shouldnt ever need it when restoring an image, only if you get a MBR foulup.


To clean your MBR, boot from a DOS disk and type
FDISK /MBR

You will no longer be able to boot the drive but you can now replace the Boot Record without corruption.
Click to expand...

Maybe you can help me too. I have been using Acronis 11 for several months now. I decided to try RAID 0 with 2 brand new hd's and I used my backup.tib file from the images i make using full backups withing Acronis. I get the same BSOD when I try to boot into windows from normal or safe mode. Any solutions for me?

On another note. I recently also invested in a much better Quality RAID controller from Areca and will most likely be going the Raid 5 route. You think i should forget about restoring the clone on to it and just start fresh?
 
pug71 said:
Maybe you can help me too. I have been using Acronis 11 for several months now. I decided to try RAID 0 with 2 brand new hd's and I used my backup.tib file from the images i make using full backups withing Acronis. I get the same BSOD when I try to boot into windows from normal or safe mode. Any solutions for me?

On another note. I recently also invested in a much better Quality RAID controller from Areca and will most likely be going the Raid 5 route. You think i should forget about restoring the clone on to it and just start fresh?
Click to expand...


Your problem is that your backup image doesn't have drives for your raid controller, that's why it bsod when windows boots. 1 solution that might work would be using acronis universal restore. Another thing that might work would be mounting the backup image on another system and manually adding the needed drivers. Yet another way would be restore the backup to teh raid array then boot from something like ultimate boot cd for windows or another bartpe environment and modify the installation to add the needed drivers
 
I'm actually not sure what's wrong with the Windows bootup right now. It keeps restarting when it tries to the load the OS (never gets to GUI mode).

Has anyone successfully cloned a Windows system to an external USB drive and booted from the USB drive? This is my main goal. It doesn't have to be a freeware program, it just has to do successfully this specific task.

I've been messing around with UBCD to see what I can do to the MBR to fix this but so far there's been no luck. I'm not even sure if this issue is even related to the MBR.
 
Skillz'n Magic said:
I use the crap outta that at work. Add that to a BartPE disc and you're set.
Click to expand...

yea we run a ghostcast server also. reimaging a unit is usually no more then 5-8 min tops

but for ease of use i think ghost is far simpler then acronis because acronis if i am correct has to be installed on the system your cloning.
 
mikey976 said:
yea we run a ghostcast server also. reimaging a unit is usually no more then 5-8 min tops

but for ease of use i think ghost is far simpler then acronis because acronis if i am correct has to be installed on the system your cloning.
Click to expand...

no need to install acronis to do anything, you can boot from the rescue disk or bartpe (acronis provides the module for bartpe)
 
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