You can also create a temporary Windows mirror set, let the automatic mirror catchup process complete, then break the mirror set and you have an exact clone of the disk being mirrored.
May I suggest the above drive. It has terrific stats and data-transfers almost like a SCSI Drive. It runs at 10,000 RPM, runs pretty cool and quiet, aside from a slight high-pitched wine, and is one of the fastest drives out there for enterprise and high-end desktop application. If your MOBO has serial ATA support, you won't even need to pay for the Retail version which comes with the SIIG controller card, either. Can be had on www.newegg.com or www.dell.com on the refurbished "software and peripherals" site at 15% off. Cost: About $133.00 without the controller card.
Yup, I was reading some great reviews about this drive too. I used to hate WD as they were so noisy but I guess their latest models have improved a lot. Figure it's good for a speed demon, but all these drives are so quick now I can't really tell the difference anymore.
MaxBlast 3, WILL clone XP drive correctly if you run it from the floppy drive instead of the CD. I do it all the time. And, you can select any partition size you want on the cloned drive, even if it is smaller than the original... When offered the choice of EZ Setup or Advanced, choose Advanced.
Hi gnome, Nice to find you on this old thread as well. If I may add my own private view. Why absolutely wanting to clone a drive? I used to be involved with these kind of jobs till a year or two ago. Further, some posters, in the other HD thread, still keep on struggeling with putting many HD's on their system (raid excepted). I think it ain't worth it these days. Get yourself a big HD. If you are like waggie, go for the 10.000rpm serial interface units. If you want to spend less, get yourself an even bigger 7200rpm IDE with 8Mb local cache, for less money. These are also very performing even with the fastest processor. Putting everything on one HD is a dream! You have to take care of backup though. Having gone through all possible schemes over the years, I now settled for a 250Gbytes usb-2 5400rpm external unit. Much better than multiple built in HD's. I can remove it and store it physically in another place. You need software though to keep your backups going. Like nitro, I like Powerquest and opted for v2i giving you highly efficient and userfriendly (understandable) incremental capabilities. Why still wanting to clone drives? Everything sits in v2i. If nothing goes anymore v2i has: (1) bootable CDrom; (2) bootable DOS floppies; (3) network restore, all this to bring your backedup drive image back onto your HD. As a poster pointed out, you could use this over a wireless network and put your backup drive in a computer at a neighbor's house if you want. This did not fit my personal setup but it could be a very workable idea. Don't loose your data, nononsense
Sounds like one is as much trouble as the other (not that much, really). As MaxBlast comes with Maxtor drives, it is a "free" solution. And for my primary, single HD trading rig, I have only one partition of 20G on each of the HDs I use for it. Simple and less cluttered.
ghost is truly a complete pain in the ass. i've been using it for about 3 years now and after i got it to work (i have an IDE/SCSI mix so the drivers were a total pain to get together) i've liked it. however, prior to going on vacation for the holidays it randomly restarted my machine about 5 discs into an 8 cd backup of my harddrive and i don't know if i've ever been so mad in my life. i am now looking for alternatives... that being said, i do use it about once every 1-3 months to create a solid backup of my harddrive, and it is indispensible for making a clean backup of a brand new computer hard drive onto CDs...
Have just "ghosted" my 3 partitions's drive to a new disk keeping the old one as secure backup (didn't do it myself as I am not fond of that kind of stuff). Works well except that the disk D was put on C ! Apparently it was due to a bug of ghost with the mouse interface but by using online command it was ok.
Hi bungrider, I know what you mean. Norton ghost can drive you nuts. I stopped using it about 1 year ago because of this. I switched to Powerquest v2i. Much neater. Does everything ghost does. Also gives you incremental capability if you wish. Is less or more the same as DriveImage but DriveImage doesn't do the incrementals. Very fast. As you said in your previous post, let's hope Norton will not wreck them. Be good, nononsense