How to Clone a hard drive?
Some times the operating system, for various reasons, stops working or starts to do it badly. We´ve tried with System Restore, Debug by removing programs, deleting files from the hard drive, repairing the Windows Registry, etc. But the system is still unstable and we cant work!
This is where having a backup of the system is extremely important, since we will only have to restore a backup to go back to a previous state.
But to achieve this we need to prepare the "clonation"
To clone Windows XP or Windows Vista we have to create an identical copy of the data structure and a disk or partition with these systems.
There are several methods and we will study the differences between them.
Clone Disk to Disk
This mechanism involves copying the hard disk entirety to another with similar characteristics. It requires another hard drive as the destination of our support, which is used as a substitute in case of emergency or to get an identical copy to the original hard disk.
Clone Partition to Partition
This technique is used to copy a complete partition to another that can be the same one or to another external hard drive. It might be interesting to have a copy of a partition on another of the same hard disk as a boot loader to start any of the 2 systems. This will quickly get out of trouble, just reboot. It is worth noting that the partition scheme must exist.
Image File
This method is used at all levels, which copies the complete hard disk or partition and a file is generated as a result of the process. This file can be stored on any drive that is accessible, or can even be burned to a CD or DVD.
Cloning Software
There are the best applications to apply this technique. Lets see the differences.
Acronis True Image Home 2009
- Compatibility with storage units, internal or external hard drives, network drives, interfaces, IDE / ATA, IDE / SATA, SCSI, FireWire (IEEE-1394), USB (1.0, 1.1 and 2.0) and PC Card (PCMCIA) removable media drives, as well as in units of CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD + R / RW, magneto-optical drives, Iomega Zip and Jaz.
- Protection with a single click: Acronis True Image Home after installation will offer to back up the system and then update them with a single click.
- Compatible with Google Desktop Search and Windows: You can search for files in multiple archives by name, including the indexing of the same name and content.
- Copies of Book: You can make backup copies of your backups and save them in the file system, a network drive or USB device.
- Zip Compatibility: You can create backup files in standard zip files as files.
- Consolidation of backup files: you can create a consistent copy of compressed files while eliminating backup selected, eliminating those not needed.
- Automatic Consolidation - allows incremental backups and merging into a single file.
File Systems supported: FAT16/32, NTFS, ext2/ext3, ReiserFS, Linux SWAP
Click here for more information.
Norton Ghost 14.0
- Backup of the whole system (disk image) backup of all content on a hard drive or a partition.
- Backup files and folders backup only the specific files and folders you choose, instead of keeping a full record.
- FTP Backup: backs recovery points on FTP sites to facilitate the administration of backups at outside locations.
- External Backup: makes backups of files on storage devices connected to the network (NAS).
- Copy and differential incremental backup: backup only modified files.
- Integration with Google Desktop ™: Makes data recovery even faster rates through backups with which to search.
- LightsOut Restore: Restores your system with a software recovery disk, without needing a boot CD.
- Remote management: Controls other Norton Ghost installations (12.0 or higher) of the Local Area Network.
- Compression and encryption advanced minimizes storage space and protects confidential documents.
File Systems supported: FAT16/32, NTFS, ext2/ext3, ReiserFS, Linux SWAP, Dynamic Disks
Click here for more information.
Drive Clone
- Make an exact copy of your hard drive and keep a bootable image.
- Store the image of your hard drive in a USB device, shared network drive or recording to CD / DVD.
- Clone disks of different sizes, and proprietary formats and copy a partition on a hard drive full.
- Support incremental files without leaving Windows.
- Cloning multiple hard drives, reducing processing time.
- Create a bootable disk for recovery
- Password protection for images
File Systems supported: FAT16/32, NTFS, ext2/ext3, ReiserFS, Linux SWAP
In our next issue: a tutorial for cloning hard drives.
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