Copy Hard Disk (Image copy)

[dw85745]

Anyone know of a (FREE) hard disk image copy program that is NOT vendor dependent.

Maxtor, Western Digital support their drives, but Fujitsu, IBM don't seem to provide copy software with their drives.

I have and IBM which I would like to copy to a Fujitsu.

Somewhere there has to be some FREE software which will make an image copy of any drive.

[prog_tom]

non of them really works. I used some Disk Copy app off download.com, non of them worked!!!

And the software came with my WD hdd doesn't really work either.

It copies the files, but then i cannot boot with the copied hdd correctly into Win2k, i don't know why.

[dw85745]

Thanks for responding.

Don't know what your doing with the DataLife that comes with WD. This has always worked well for me to make an image copy to/from a WD disk.

Maxtors MaxBlast also works great.

Have looked at download.com but as you point out most are trial version which have the image copy disabled.

Guess I'll have to try and write one.

Thanks
David

[si_the_geek]

I actually did this yesterday... Maxtors MaxBlast wouldn't work because the source drive was NTFS (Win 2000), luckily I've got Ghost which can handle it.

Unfortunately... on booting windows said the page file (virtual memory) wasn't big enough, but wouldn't let you log in so you could change it. Luckily using the Win2000 setup cd to repair it worked.


I don't know of any free versions of Ghost, but there might be..

[Celest]

I always use Norton Ghost and out of a couple of dozen times of loading a backup it hasnt failed once. Unfortunately it isn't free () but it's well worth the money if it saves hundreds of hours of work.

[dw85745]

THanks guys for input.

Familiar with name Norton Ghost but never used it.
I understand Partition Manager will also do this.

Unfortunately have neither.

Am curious as to how they image as seems it should be a block byte by byte copy and if so shouldn't be to difficult to write.

Anyone ever messed with doing this?

[prog_tom]

Originally posted by si_the_geek
I actually did this yesterday... Maxtors MaxBlast wouldn't work because the source drive was NTFS (Win 2000), luckily I've got Ghost which can handle it.

Unfortunately... on booting windows said the page file (virtual memory) wasn't big enough, but wouldn't let you log in so you could change it. Luckily using the Win2000 setup cd to repair it worked.


I don't know of any free versions of Ghost, but there might be..

I got the same problem, damn, how did you fix it? Just simply fix the Win2k Setup by using Win2k Setup Disc?

[prog_tom]

I never really touched Ghost, which version should I get? Is the GUI hard to use? I don't wanna accidentally screw up my hdd info

[dw85745]

What version of MaxBlast are you using?
MaxBlast 3 (available for download is the latest).


If this doesn't work, my understanding is Win2000 has a RAID option which will allow you to copy.

[si_the_geek]

Originally posted by prog_tom
I got the same problem, damn, how did you fix it? Just simply fix the Win2k Setup by using Win2k Setup Disc?

yep, I booted from the CD & tried doing a straight repair first, but that didn't work... so I ran it again, and went into setup a new copy of windows, which gives another option of repairing (which worked). It lost the drivers for the modem, but everything else worked fine.

I never really touched Ghost, which version should I get? Is the GUI hard to use? I don't wanna accidentally screw up my hdd info

I don't have a clue which version I have - I only ever use it on a floppy disk with a few other programs. The GUI is simple, it's obvious what to do.

I understand Partition Manager will also do this.

and Partition Magic, among others.

[prog_tom]

partition magic copies hdds? Never saw that feature in ver6,...