# Solved: Exact bootable copy of hard drive



## Severcool (Aug 24, 2007)

I need to make an exact copy of one hard drive (20Gb) to a new hard drive (80Gb) and make it bootable. I have an IDE to USB converter to hook up the new hard drive to the old system. I just am unsure of how to go about it. Could someone please help. Thanks in advance.

What I want to do in the end is replace the old HDD with the new HDD.

Using:
XP Pro SP2


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Usually, you can find cloning applications at the manufacturer's site, or you can use one of these:

Free Drive Cloners/Imagers:

XXClone
GImageX (GUI for Vista's built-in, hardware-agnostic volume imaging and restoration program, ImageX.)
CloneZilla GParted LiveCD (Complete partitioning and drive imaging/restoration tools)
CloneZilla
Partition Saving
PCI CloneMaxx
Drive Image XML
EaseUs Disk Copy
HDClone
DriveClonerXP
Self-Image

Commercial Apps:

O&O DiskImage
Acronis True Image Home
Keriver Image
Avanquest Copy Commander
Paragon Drive Backup
NovaBackup
R-Drive Image
Norton Ghost
HDClone Pro or Enterprise
Terabyte Image for Windows
Terabyte Image for DOS (can directly access FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions)
Spotmau Disk Clone & Backup

Saikee also has some instructions here:

*saikee's* "How to migrate an operating system to a bigger hard disk." using Linux


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## fairnooks (Oct 1, 2007)

The way I would do it is make a drive image of the 20gig on DVDs with either Acronis True Image or DriveSnapshot, then swap drives, boot to the image DVD and "recover" that image to the larger hard drive.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

No need for the middle step. Acronis can clone directly without an image creation.


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## Severcool (Aug 24, 2007)

I will try on eof the free utilities. Do you have a preference Elvandil?


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

I've had good luck with HDClone, but I used the pay version. The free one is supposed to work fine if the destination drive is not smaller.

Saikee's directions are very good, too, if you have any Linux around.

Easeus Disk Copy, Clonezilla, and Xxclone are next. Nothing is as good as Acronis, but at least with the free ones, if it fails for some reason, nothing is lost--just try again. 

And it also depends how you connect the destination drive. All should work if it is connected internally, but only some have USB drivers.


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## Severcool (Aug 24, 2007)

I do have Ubunto 7.1 on CD.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

I forgot the link to Saikee's directions:

*saikee's* "How to migrate an operating system to a bigger hard disk." using Linux


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## harthecoolcat (Sep 16, 2007)

Severcool said:


> I do have Ubunto 7.1 on CD.


dd command should be available in this distribution and you should be able to follow Saikee's direction. You may have to do "sudo dd <options>" instead of just "dd <options>", I believe.
GParted should also be available in Ubuntu 7.10 CD so you can use it to make use of unallocated space. (I'd suggest you defragment your disk before you use gparted to resize partitions.)


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