Disk Cloning

Greetings. Been away for a while due to moving across the country. I'd like some advise on an event I plan to initiate, please. I beg you to bear with me also as outline what I have in mind. I figure the clearer I explain myself, the easier it is for you guys to help me.

I have a Sager NP9261 loaded with three 250GB HDs and a Sager NP2092 with a 320GB HD. They are nice, no problems whatsoever since purchase last spring. But since I work with video for instructional purposes (sign language video stuff) I know I will need as much space as I can get when I hit my new projects in earnest this coming spring. So I bit on the Newegg special offer of Samsung Spinpoint(?) 500GB HDs. The plan is to replace the 250's and the 320. Another goal is to clear my desk of about 5 USB external HDs I use to store video files on at this time (238GB of data).

To do this, I purchased two items (though one of them would do the transfer job) to help me:

1. VANTEC SATA & IDE TO USB 2.0 ADAPTER
2. VANTEC 2.5/3.5IN SATA HDD DOCK TO USB 2.0/ESATA

Basically both items let you take a naked (unenclosed) HD and hook them to the adapter and your computer. You can format the drive, transfer data etc. I figure doing this before I remove the existing drives will save me time and trouble (knock on wood). The cloning software I bought is Acronis True Image 11 Home. MY OS is XP Pro SP3.

Finally, the question and thank you for your patience with my long-winded explanation. What concerns should I have with this endeavor? Can I expect my OS to work as it did on the original drives and the paths to programs to work as well? Is my idea even realistic at all or should I just install the drives and do a complete OS and software programs installation? I'll appreciate any experienced advice, cautions, warnings or what have you.

 

cloning/ghosting HDDs is quite simple.

You're setup is fine as well.

I use Acronis DriveImage or Norton Ghost 2003 for my cloning... works well since I run it on a bootable USB drive.

 

On the note of concerning clearing your desk of external drives: Since you are upgrading your internal laptop hard drives, you may want to sell those 2.5" drives as well as your 5 USB external drives off to make way for a 3.5" to put in an enclosure for extra space and backup purposes, after you finish cloning of course. The Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB would be my first choice for its speed and reliability. You will also have enough for 70+ hours of DV raw content. Hope to help

 

Finally, since you're going to be playing with those hard drives naked, make sure you have a good place to store the ones you're not using carefully, so that they don't get dusty, dirty, wet, too hot, etc (you know, sort of like a wife, but a lot less noisy ) and so that they're protected from physical damage, like being dropped, or having something dropped on them.

 

I did it with a free open-source software called partimage and my 30go partition took about 1 hour to backup into a single file and 15 min to put back on my new hard drive and appart for the bootloader which I had to restore every thing worked like a charm and every software ran perfectly, on the first try.