astral Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 My hard disk is playing up and must be replaced. I want to make an Image of all the data on disk to be able to restore it on the new disk once installed, rather than having to install all the programmes again. I have a large external disk to take the image. What SW do you recommend I use? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Langsuan Man Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost are my preferred choices but if you want a free open source alternative try DriveImage XML available here: http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
briley Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Most hard disk manufacturers will let you download a free copy of Acronis True Image from their website that only works if you have one of their hard drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daffy D Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Macrium Reflect Free Almost identical to Acronis but for free Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikster Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 This is really old, but it worked perfectly for me the one time I tried. And it's free: It clones your windows system disk to another HD. http://www.xxclone.com/ For you case you can either go via your external drive, or put the new HD in an external box, clone your system disk, swap disks, done. That's what I did, worked a charm. But caution, it's been a few years. I don't think MS made their file systems harder to clone meanwhile but you never know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_boo Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 Clonezilla. Absolutely free and quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted February 3, 2011 Share Posted February 3, 2011 If you have Windows 7 (not sure if all versions have it) you can make a system image with no extra software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
astral Posted February 3, 2011 Author Share Posted February 3, 2011 Thanks I have Acronis TrueImage 8 and it works like a dream on XP, but refuses to run on W7. I have been trying to download the latest trial version but it is a massive 400Mb I am now downloading the Macrium and will try that. I did look at the W7 builtin version but it was not clear how I install the image to a new disk. Thanks for all the suggestions. I will report back in due course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossy Posted February 4, 2011 Share Posted February 4, 2011 I did look at the W7 builtin version but it was not clear how I install the image to a new disk.. The last step of creating the image is to make a restore/rescue disk. You boot from it after installing your new drive and follow the prompts I've done it several times and it works very well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
astral Posted February 4, 2011 Author Share Posted February 4, 2011 The disk was so bad that I was unable to image it, Macrium gave multiple CRC errors. The W7 imaging just hung......... No errors just telling me there were 40 minutes to go, even after 2 hours or more. I was able to copy most of the important data to my external disk then inserted the new disk and booted to factory settings from the W7 installation disks. Fortunately there were not too many programmes to reinstall. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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