perris

the problem now is I think it's the bigger disc that's failing, so I have to get new hardrive anyway

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kcnychief

Well buying a new drive isn't really the issue - getting the data off before it fails is, right?

Acronis is probably your best bet if that's the case, as you can image while the machine is up and running. Not sure if you need to reboot after install though.

Has a free trial, although it may be limited

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/download/ATICW/

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perris

I am going to have to image both drives on to the new hardrive

will both programs be able to do that?

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kcnychief

The only way you could do that is to create two partitions ahead of time that are sizeable enough to hold the data.

Example:

Drive 1: - 60 GB
Drive 2: - 80 GB

While the new drive, let's call it Drive 3 for discussion, has plenty of space, you would need to ensure both partitions have enough slack to hold whatever data is there. You don't need the full 60/80, but if say they are both half full, make sure they are at least 30/40.

Then, you would do a "Disk to Partition" Image

EDIT: I haven't done that yet with Acronis, as I use it primarily for servers. If you are doing that task, I know it's possible and probably easier with Ghost once the drive is allocated (partitioned) properly.

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perris

ya, so I have to format the hardrive, partition, then create the image

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kcnychief

Essentially if you hook the new drive up to a PC, you don't really have to create partitions you can just allocate proper space.

What I mean by that, is Disk Management will see the whole volume at first. When you go to initialize the drive, only give it a piece of the total space, essentially creating a paritition within Windows. Then, use the leftover space to create the second (or subsequent for as many as needed) partitions.

Once that is done, you don't really have to create the image unless you want it for backup. You can go right from one partition to another, which is the quickest way to go. If the drive isn't healthy, I suggest doing it that way. Then, when the new drive is ready to go, make a backup of that. You want to minimize the amount of time the "sick drive" is needed. Imaging to another disk is much faster than creating an image of a disk.

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Maroon

hi all, i am for true image too, and there is an interesting article about the comparison of two well known imaging progs: true image and norton ghost. hope it would be interesting for you.

kamal_ak47

thanks