Clone hdd software

Sxotty

Legend
Anyone know of a preferable freeware piece of software to clone contents of a HDD?

I have a 2.5 inch drive that has a dying motor. It will start sometimes and not others. It seems like all data is intact and I would really really like to get everything off including the registry etc... to put on a new hdd.

The reason is I spent a lot of time previously optimizing it to work in a CarPC and I don't want to screw around with that again to get the low boot times etc...

I believe norton ghost used to do it, but I thought there might be something free out there that you know of and is good.

Thanks

Edit:

Well I already found this.
http://www.clonezilla.org/

It might do the trick
 
dd_rhelp is a nice linux utility on top of dd_rescue. It's like dd made specifically for rescuing a partition, e.g. it doesn't give up on errors, has progress indication, can resume an interrupted operation.
 
Do these software programs allow you to copy to a 3rd HDD? I only have one USB enclosure so I would need to copy from the HDD --> main PC --> new HDD.

And do you know if you copy the entire contents even if blank or just where written. I wondered if it is a bit for bit copy if it copies even the empty sectors. I don't have the new drive yet it is in the mail, that is why I haven't tried to find out.
 
dd and dd_rhelp are doing bit-for-bit copying, and yes you can tell them to copy a partition to a file and vice versa. I don't know about ranish partition manager and clonezilla...
 
Just download the latest version of Hiren's and burn to cd (google it). Then use either Acronis TrueImage or Symantec Ghost.
 
A good idea in the sense that it's powerful and flexible, yet a bad idea in the sense that it's illegal.
 
Thanks for all your input guys.

When the new drive arrives I will give it a try and see what happens. There is still one sticky point (IDE-->SATA) though I will see if I can over come that as well I think I recall there was a way to do that.

All other hardware is the same. I could probably do a repair install, to get the SATA drivers loaded, but that might FUBAR all the effort I went to. Of course I will still have the drive image so I can wipe it and try again if I fail.
 
A good idea in the sense that it's powerful and flexible, yet a bad idea in the sense that it's illegal.

pfft, what are you talking about? no one suggests anyone do anything illegal here

no software is being installed on anyone's PC, thus no EULA's are violated

also, all software packaged on CD is considered "abandonware" (i.e. old versions no longer sold)
 
Riiight... I'm sure Acronis and Symantec would agree. Just because commercial software is EOL from their providers (having been superseded by later versions) doesn't mean they're fair game.
 
Lets not go in that direction to far. Although I understand that Symantec actually made ghost less useful as time passed in many ways b/c of worries of cloning a disc for nefarious purposes. Somewhat disappointing of them if true.
 
Seriously? It's a blatant breach of copyright. No ifs or buts about it. What does or doesn't get "installed" and what EULAs you aren't presented with is utterly and totally irrelevant pretty much everywhere.
 
feel free to prove me wrong

I'd love to know if that were the case. I mean, I can show you millions if not billions of dollars in revenue that can be directly attributed to the use of this software so...
 
How could I prove you wrong except to note that the duplication and use of copyrighted materials are prohibited by law in all civilized jurisdictions in the world unless permission to do so is expressly granted by the copyright holder. Any use of Hiren's require the former and haven't got the latter (for several of the components).
 
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