best way to copy a primary drive to another?

[VenomXt]

ok here is my situation. I run a old p2 machine as a file server. Lately the 10 gig hardive that runs the os and the client stuff has been grinding. Having heard this sound many times i know its on its way out. I have a 120 gig drive that i want to partition 20-(rest) what is the best way to copy the old 10 gig onto the 20 gig partition so i dont have to reset up a bunch of crap. and that i dont lose 10 gigs of free space. I just want this to be as simple as possible. willing to pay for a program to do it. (dont have time to reset alot of the crap that needs to reset on a reinstall).

 

[FishBoy]

drag and drop, i dont think ghosting would be the best idea coz it'll also copy the bad sector flags from the dying disk so yea i think file transfering one by one would be a good one

 

[VenomXt]

i dont acually have any data on the bad drive that i want to save just the config. The drive is JUST loud. No blue screens or anything yet. I want to do this as a preemtive strike.

 

[Nick]

I'd go with symantec ghost. I checked what fishboy was saying, as I didn't think it copied bad sectors, and it's optional wether you want to do a sector by sector copy or just copy the files.

I'd be interested to see what the best way of doing this under linux or from a linux boot disk/CD would be? I get the feeling there might be an easy way to do it, but I'd have to research it a bit.

Ok, so I got myself interested and went and looked it up. If you don't want to spend any money and are happy having a go at linux try this:
http://www.rajeevnet.com/hacks_hints/os_clone/os_cloning.html

If your not running linux at the moment, you can download a live CD such as knoppix to do this with.

Just spotted at the bottom of that page are the necessary files to run it from a dos environment (such as a win98 bootdisk, if your running xp).

 

[VenomXt]

i have a copy of shost so i would probaly try to do that. Iv used knoppix's to recover files works really well. Will keep informed with results.

 

[Tweakfiend]

See Acronis TruImage 8

 

[Johnny]

Symantec ghost ?? Why would you do that to your pc .. Get Acronis True Image. Or, you could use a disk cloner ..

 

[FishBoy]

\
I'd go with symantec ghost. I checked what fishboy was saying, as I didn't think it copied bad sectors, and it's optional wether you want to do a sector by sector copy or just copy the files.

cool i didnt know that

 

[Nick]

Symantec ghost ?? Why would you do that to your pc .. Get Acronis True Image. Or, you could use a disk cloner ..

If there are better options out there, go with them. Would be nice to know what the problems are with Ghost, rather than just putting it down.

 

[Johnny]

Ghost has a problem with making corrupt backups at times, I now many of people who have lost things because of it .... Me included .. I been using true image for a couple of years now, I never had a prob with it ..

 

[NetRyder]

Heh, I've used Ghost, DriveImage and TrueImage at different points of time and they all worked as advertised. Don't see a problem with any of them, to be honest.

 

[American Zombie]

Ghost has a problem with making corrupt backups at times, I now many of people who have lost things because of it .... Me included ..

Sounds like user error of some kind to me.
How could you lose the original data anyway unless you format the drive you were copying without first checking what you just copied it to is intact.

 

[Xie]

When I copied my primary drive (as it was failing) I used Knoppix and "dd" to do the copying. I believe it creates an exact mirror of your drive so may be a bit more then you need, but it's all free.

 

[X-Istence]

When I copied my primary drive (as it was failing) I used Knoppix and "dd" to do the copying. I believe it creates an exact mirror of your drive so may be a bit more then you need, but it's all free.

That copies it bit on bit. That could create a problem with the fact that he wants to use the rest of the drive. Don't know though, can always try.

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 bs=512

in knoppix.

 

[Xie]

That copies it bit on bit. That could create a problem with the fact that he wants to use the rest of the drive. Don't know though, can always try.

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 bs=512

in knoppix.

I did it from drive A that had 2 partitions to drive B that had 2 partitions and worked ok. Copied both partions separately and worked fine. Also now that I remember I used a "dd" like program that also had a error handling (dd stops on read error), this other program would attempt to re-read bad sectors.

 

[VenomXt]

im lazy and the drive has stopped making noise, It is an old 6 gig drive so its.. just old lol. Im gona try several things this weekends. will update more about this. In the middle of a movie.

 

[Ferral_Imp]

Ghost has a problem with making corrupt backups at times, I now many of people who have lost things because of it .... Me included .. I been using true image for a couple of years now, I never had a prob with it ..

And Acronis True Image can copy all your folders to the new drive without any on the files inside of them if it errors (I've had this happen). Any imaging software can have an odd hiccup that causes it to screw up.

 

[Nick]

The article I linked to above includes more info on the use of dd as Xie and X-Istence describe, inluding links to dd for windows if your not comfortable in linux.