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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Drive Cloning

I found a program called DiskImage XML that a number of people thought highly of for cloning a disk drive, when getting ready to install a new drive.  It seems to do what needs to be done.  I created an NTFS Active partition on the new drive (connected through a USB adapter).  I used the drive to drive copy.  But it does not boot when I put the new drive into the notebook.  No errors--just sits there, stupidly, when it should be booting.

I hate to pay someone to do this, when it is probably something simple.

UPDATE: Now using Acronis Migrate Easy.  It is free for a 15 day trial--which is more than sufficient for cloning a hard disk.  It seems a bit more automated and well packaged specifically for cloning hard drives.  I'm running it now on the other computer.  I'll report back in a few hours when I get from the theater.

UPDATE 2: It works, and it works very well.  You can download what they call the demo version of Acronis Migrate Easy (which means, a 15 day trial) here.

4 comments:

  1. Don't know that program, but it does not sound like you copied the boot sector.

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  2. Or it could be you need to change the drive's jumpers so it knows it's the boot drive.

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  3. the drive may not be set as master, or it could be something entirely different. drivers maybe?

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  4. Using the bare program like you did works well, but if you can get it from your drive manufacturer you're better off.

    Heck, now that WD bought Hitachi and Seagate bought Samsung there are effectively only 2 drive companies in the world these days and both of them offer Acronis gratis.

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