[damitamit]

Just bought a Samsung Spinpoint 120GB (very quiet) to replace my Maxtor 740dx 80GB (noisy!) for my 'silent' pc.

I want to do a clone of the maxtor onto the new samsung, as I don't want to go throught the hassle of installing and configuring windows and all my programs again.

Anyone know of any free software which will perform this task well?

thanks
Amit

 

[Angelfly]

I don't know of any 'free' software, but I know the process is called Ghosting. Perhaps google it? Hope that helps...

 

[jpr703]

Norton Ghost would work well but wouldn't be free.

 

[acs236]

I never tried it myself, but this program is free and has a cool name:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla/

 

[Stephonovich]

Or you could use Linux's dd command. Get any Live CD, and as root, type dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hda2, assuming the source drive is the Primary Master, and they're both IDE. Or use Unixutils, which lets includes a Windows port of dd.

Be warned this will take awhile (you're copying 80GB, after all - dd copies every single sector, empty or not), and you'll probably have to go in with a partition manager after and increase your free space to fill up the whole drive, but you'd have to do the same with Ghost, last I checked.

 

[damitamit]

I used this in the end:

Clone Maxx

FREE and it worked flawlessy. Also it was very fast, only taking around 30mins for the whole 80gb. Left me with the 80gb hd cloned onto the 120gb, and all i had to do was fill in the left over space using partitionmagic.

Thanks for the suggestions thou!

damit - sitting with his near silent pc - amit

 

[Stephonovich]

That looks like a really good product, actually... anyway, good luck with your silent PC quest! I oughta get to mine some day. Have an Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer for my 9800 Pro, and a pretty quiet Seagate 160GB, but the fans... can we say roar?

 

[wallijonn]

Amit,

Is it SATA or PATA?
Did you buy either drive retail?
If you did - it probably came with software.
If it didn't, go to Samsung or Maxtor and download their software.

 

[kevin gilmore]

quotes
Or you could use Linux's dd command. Get any Live CD, and as root, type dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hda2, assuming the source drive is the Primary Master, and they're both IDE. Or use Unixutils, which lets includes a Windows port of dd.

Be warned this will take awhile (you're copying 80GB, after all - dd copies every single sector, empty or not), and you'll probably have to go in with a partition manager after and increase your free space to fill up the whole drive, but you'd have to do the same with Ghost, last I checked.


Ghost automatically adjusts the partition sizes. I use this product on
a daily basis. The unix dd command usually does not result in a bootable
drive because the fdisk partition has the wrong lengths.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by damitamit Just bought a Samsung Spinpoint 120GB (very quiet) to replace my Maxtor 740dx 80GB (noisy!) for my 'silent' pc.

There is a free utility from Maxtor called AMSET that will quiet down your drive.

 

[viator122]

I bought a 200GB Seagate drive last night which came with great utilities. I installed the utilities on my old HD, then set the Seagate to be the slave and installed it. Ran the utility and told it how to partition it and that I wanted to use the new drive as my boot drive. It copied everything over to the new drive and then told me to set the new drive as the master. Couldn't have been easier.

 

[CSMR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by damitamit Anyone know of any free software which will perform this task well? thanks Amit

Isn't there some at Samsung's website? I'm sure that's what I used.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kevin gilmore Ghost automatically adjusts the partition sizes. I use this product on a daily basis. The unix dd command usually does not result in a bootable drive because the fdisk partition has the wrong lengths.

Ah, alright then. As for dd, though, I don't see how it wouldn't work. It's a bit-for-bit perfect. The EAC of hard drives, if you will. There's utilities that can implement CRC along with dd to ensure a perfect copy.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich Ah, alright then. As for dd, though, I don't see how it wouldn't work. It's a bit-for-bit perfect. The EAC of hard drives, if you will. There's utilities that can implement CRC along with dd to ensure a perfect copy.

I think what Gilmore is saying is that dd is too perfect, copying things that make the drive think it's something else than it really is...

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aeriyn I think what Gilmore is saying is that dd is too perfect, copying things that make the drive think it's something else than it really is...

Erm, clarify, please? The only problems you'd run into is if the drives were of different size, in which case either the clone would fail (if the source was larger than the destiantion), or you'd have a smaller than maximum partition, if the destination was larger than the source. And, as mentioned, any decent partition manager can fix that for you.

Look, I'm not advocating people use dd on a regular basis for stuff like this. I almost brought it up more of a joke than anything. Do I use it? Not for cloning drives, no. Ghost is just easier. Does it work, though? Yes. For that matter, cat /dev/hda1 > /dev/hda2 would work.