question about cloning/ghosting a working harddrive OS to another same pc questions..

[tgg]

Ok a question about cloning/ghosting a harddrive.

Now I have customer that has a dell laptop that will like to buy anothe laptop same model basically on ebay so then he can do a exact copy of the current laptop drive like a ghost/cloning then install that image that was created to the new used laptop off from ebay.

Now is this possible if so whats a good program to use? also does the new used laptop from ebay have to be the exact specs hardware components as the cloned drive one? thanks

 

[Joe Average]

If it's the same series of laptop (and I don't mean the brand - I mean if he has a Dell Latitude D620 for example and he's about to buy another D620, for example) then the only real difference in the hardware would most likely be either a faster or slower CPU (could be exactly the same, too), more or less RAM (which could be transplanted from the current machine), or most likely a different GPU (onboard vs discrete, or vice versa).

If that's the case - the models match - then cloning/ghosting is a fairly easy process. Could use something like Acronis True Image if he wants commercial software (if he has a Seagate or Western Digital hard drive of any kind he could get the stripped down version of that software from Seagate or Western Digital). If not, then a free solution like Clonezilla would be very useful as well, or DriveImage XML, etc. There are several free cloning/ghosting tools out there these days, take your pick, they'll all end up doing the same thing.

Note that cloning/ghosting doesn't mean just copying all the files from the source to the target drive; the process of cloning/ghosting is to create a bit-for-bit copy, with everything intact and matching on both drives when you're done, save for doing a proportional partition resize which the cloning/ghosting software should handle automagically.

That's about it - if you've got more questions, just ask.

 

[tgg]

Cool thanks I will report in the near future how it went, I still need to order a laptop n such. Thanks

 

[Demon10000]

Just remember --

If he's been using the computer for a while now, and the OS isn't performing (which I'm assuming is the reason one would want new hardware?) --- doing this isn't going to help much.

Yes, a faster process and more RAM would technically make it run better, but nothing beats a fresh install.