cloning harddrive and changing partitions...

i just bought a new hdd and was wondering if it's possible to clone the original hdd AND change the size of partitions on the new hdd? if possible what software would do this?

 

I would use Hiren's Boot CD. In fact, I do this sort of thing almost daily with Hiren's boot CD. You can use Norton Ghost which is on the CD to clone the old drive directly onto the new drive if you have the proper hookups, or, you can clone the drive to an image then put the image onto the new drive. Either way, you can tell the partitions to expand to fill the entire new drive.
Hope this helps

 

can i get some suggestions with legal software, preferably free and reliable, too?

 

I just started using a program called PartImage a week or so ago. It is excellent. It will create an image of your drive and then you can restore that image onto another drive.

When you say "change the partitions", do you mean that you want to change the Windows directory (such as from C: to E: ) or just create a new partition table while leaving Windows as-is?

I suggest you use PartImage on this cd:

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

It includes a few other useful tools such as GParted and Midnight Commander with it.

 

i want to change the size of the partitions.

 

Ok then the disk I recommended can do that fine. It has GParted included with it.

PartImage only creates an image of used space, so you can restore to to a different size partition. The program is a little quirky (because NTFS support is "experimental" with it). You're going to want to resize the partition before backing up to be at small as possible. The program has issues restoring to a partition smaller than the original. Then after the restoration resize with GParted to be any size you like.

A word of warning, after the restoration you might be prompted with a CHKDSK during bootup. Skip it! Then let Windows boot up. Within a minute it will prompt you that to make changes it must restart. Restart, and then allow CHKDSK to run. Otherwise the restored Windows won't recognize the hard drive partition changes.

 

Here's a question, will the image of the disk be as big as the disk itself? and how do you guys go about doing it?

 

The image will only be of the used data. It will in fact be smaller (about 60% the size) because it will compress the image. The compression is part of the PartImage process. If you want to try it out I suggest you read the first post on the fifth page here. E.B.E. does a good job pointing out the basics of the program.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81828&page=5

 

OK, cool, Ima check that out , since I`ll be buying a 320Gb drive and will probably want to clone everything I have.
OS included?

 

You put a question mark at the end there so I'm not sure if you were asking a question...

If you were... Then yes close the OS as well. The program clones individual partitions rather than the whole drive, so just make an image of all your partitions individually. When you are restoring the OS partition you will need to restore the MBR after restoring the data. (You will see that option noted in the program). After restoring the MBR an error message will prompt saying, "Error: Device Busy". This is a bug. That actually means, "restoration complete!" .

 

Got it. Will have to rep ya later, I`m out`of`em