Is hard drive imaging diffucult?

I'm thinking about imaging my hard drive, but how does it exactly work? Is it like the traditional windows backup? Does the free programs perform well as the paid ones? My current hard drive is 320 gb 5400 rpm, can the current image be used on a upgraded one with larger capacity and speed, how long will it take to image and restore the drive, and does vista be activate again? Has anyone had problems with restoring an image?

 

Which free program can do windows imaging?

 

I am interested in this subject also


http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/05/5-free-apps-to-clone-your-hard-drive/

 

I've read that if you want to image your current hard drive to a new one you need a SATA to USB converter cable. Will this method work if I creating an image onto the external hard drive and create a bootable rescue disk from the disk imaging program. Then take out the old internal hard drive and replace it with the new one and use the rescue disk to boot onto the new one. Finally, transfer the image from the external to the new hard drive.

 

Traditionally Windows does not perform image backups, it performs system backups which is not the same thing.
The exception here is Windows 7. Windows 7 has a very good disk imaging and backup program built in and I can vouch that it works very well. I have used it before. It is fast, faster than Acronis TI, and of course it is free if you have the OS.

Depends on which free programs you speak of. Both Western Digital and Seagate use a version of Acronis True Image which works much the same as the retail version as long as you have either Seagate HD's or Western Digital HD's. The programs are free and more information can be obtained on those web sites.

1. Yes.
2. Depends on the size of the image. 50GB of data in a image takes around 30-40 minutes.
3. The OS does not have to be reactivated in most cases but if it does, no big deal.
4. Usually no problem, but there can always be problem with a restore. Since you are restoring to a new drive and are only writing from the original drive your data is always intact on the original so even if there is a problem you just try to write the image again on the new HD.

You can create an image of your current hard drive to a file on an external HD for archiving or other purposes. Weekly I save images of two computer setups on my WD passport external USB drives. If you were to replace the old drive in your laptop with a new drive, then use bootable rescue media from the imaging program, you could image the new HD from the image you have stored on the external HD and be good to go. The new HD may have to be formatted before you begin the process.

If you want to create an exact image of your current HD on a new drive this would be called cloning your HD. In this case you are not creating an image file on your external HD you are creating an exact duplicate of your original HD. You need to have an external USB enclosure to house your new HD for this process (or a USB to SATA cable set), I would get an enclosure, they are cheap.

The same software can be use for either of the above senario's and each will provide you with the results you seek.

You can read some information about imaging or cloning of drives from the free software from WD if you have WD drives here:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en

Or go to Acronis Software and read about Acronis True Image which is very good software for this purpose but you have to purchase it.

Other good software (not free) is DriveImage, Macrium, Norton Ghost.

If you do a search on this forum or the Windows 7 forum you will find many, many posts/threads on disk replacement and imaging.

 

Thanks for the information

 

Like already mentioned, Acronis True Image is very good.

Free imaging programs worth looking at are DriveImageXML and Paragon Backup&Recovery.

 

Correction: It used to be very good. Unfortunately, the newest versions are a disaster, and cause problems on 64-bit Windows, and on machines with Intel Matrix Storage Manager. You know, little things like being unable to perform any backup at all because your system will freeze hard, requiring a power-button reset. Acronis hasn't been able or willing to fix this issue for months. I used to rely on them exclusively for years, until I found out at the end of last year that their new version doesn't work anymore. They're history as far as I am concerned...

 

I've had my share of frustrations with Acronis due to its USB detection while in the bootable environment. The program itself is also far greater than what I need it for. Maybe I'll look into the built-in functions of W7.

 

If you're looking for a free image program you may want to check out http://clonezilla.org/

I've never used it, but a pcper.com (PC Perspective) podcast recommended it, can't remember the podcast date but it was only 2-3 months ago. The guys at pcper.com really know what they are talking about. They are the guys that contacted Intel regarding problems with their SSD firmware, can't remember if that was the first generation ssd or their second. If your into indepth articles and podcasts, I recommend checking them out.

 

Thanks for the correction; good to know.
Haven't used their latest version so I was unaware of these issues.

 

another software you might want to consider is macrium backup..its free...
im using it for couple times to restore my windows 7 and so far it doesnt give me any problems

 

I'm going to make an image using Macrium Reflect, before I upgrade to vista SP1. If something goes wrong with the upgrade to where it makes my laptop unbootable, can I use that image to restore it to a working state?

 

Yes. Be sure to make a Macrium Reflect Recovery CD so you can boot to the Macrium Reflect program to restore the image.

I would expect you are saving the image on an external HD.

 

+1 for Windows 7, I see no reason to get a third party solution. You don't even have to make a repair disc for using when Windows stopped working, any W7 installation DVD/USB works as well.