Free drive ghosting software?

[EET]

Does anyone know if there is any free ghosting software available anywhere? I'm gonna check prices when I go to work tonight, I just did a fresh install with drivers & such, and I'm at a point I'd like to ghost the drive. Would the system restore tool be alright to use? I haven't really looked at it yet.

 

[drizzt81]

Gparted may be able to do it. It is available as a liveCD boot.
Otherwise you can use a linux liveCD and dd if=/olddrive of=newdrive
If you own a WD drive, you can use their "drive diagnostic tools" which has a cloning program. It's free if you own one of their HDDs and it's either the source or destination.

 

[digital_exhaust]

Gparted may be able to do it.

Do you know how to do this? I'm asking because I would really like to know if it can. I think GParted is one of the most useful apps available, and having the ability to ghost a drive as well would be awesome!! I'm assuming that this would be done by moving a partition from one drive to another, but I have tried this, and have yet to succeed, so any information you could provide would be great.

 

[t00thless]

its a little late now, probably, but a little while back in the free forum, someone posted a link to download acronis v7. i jumped on it but haven't installed it yet. i think acronis is now up to v10 and they were giving away 7 in hopes of people upgrading.

search the free forum and see if the deal is still alive.

 

[EET]

Nah, it's not too late I did some looking before I punched in at work (Best Buy), and didn't really see anything. I know we used to carry Norton Ghost, but I didn't see it or any other ghosting program on the shelf. I'll look into the ones you guys mentioned, thanks for a timelizzy reply

 

[blendingnoise]

Not sure what you mean by ghosting but if you mean copying take a look at this thread for a free copy of Acronis True Image 7
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1107924&highlight=acronis+true+image

 

[Dangman]

Here's a direct link:

http://www.acronis.com/mag/vnu-ati7

Acronis True Image is exactly what you're looking for I believe.

 

[blisstik]

i use an OEM version of Ghost that runs in DOS (think Win98)... it can dump your C partition in a separate FAT32 partition but it can't dump it on an NTFS partition... so my setup looks like this

C: 10GB NTFS (xp)
D: 400GB NTFS (stuff)
E: 10GB FAT32 (restore drive)

Ghost 2003 is suppose to be able to dump a partition on an NTFS drive but I couldn't get that to work with mine. I also like the fact that the partition dump program runs in DOS meaning, its a "clean and complete" dump

Another software would be power quest partition magic, which I haven't used.

 

[EET]

PartitionMagic does it? I have 8.0, and I'm lookin'... I see 'Create backup partition' and 'Copy a partition'. They look to be the only two possibilities. Am I missin' something?

 

[blisstik]

I'm sorry I meant Power Quest Image Center aka Deploy Center... I'm just so used to Partition Magic since that's what I use to format new drives really fast.

I wouldn't use those options from Partition Magic if I were you