Cloning NTFS partition

Hi,
I have True Image 8.0, my WinXP PC has a 30 GB hard drive.

I just bought a I/O Magic 40GB external drive so that I can clone my hard drive. The XP 30 GB drive is formatted as NTFS. The brand new I/O Magic ext. drive is formatted as FAT32.

1) Is it possible to clone the 30 GB drive onto a drive that is larger in size?

2) Will the 10 GBs extra become free space on the cloned disk? Does it have to be a seperate partition?

3) Do I need to convert the IO Magic drive to NTFS before I start...?

4) Anything I need to watch out for?

Thanks in advance.

 

Unless you have a special need, all logical drives should be NTFS.

 

Howard,
Thanks for the help. I will convert the drive to NTFS. What about the size questions? Can you advise me on that?

 

Unless you plan to remove the drive from the IOMagic enclosure to use as an internal in case the present internal one goes bad, Cloning is not the feature I would use. Better to use the Backup feature which makes an Image of your internal drive on to the IOMagic. And depending on how much space is actually used space on the internal, you could probably save two or three backups of your internal on the IOMagic.

 

Ralphie,
Thanks for the advice. I am really just trying to take the simplest restore path in the event of a serious hardware failure. If I take your advice and go with the Backups (in lieu of Cloning) what would be the restore process (at a high level)?

I'm assuming I would get a replacement disk, install it in the machine then what? Can I use the TI rescue media and avoid having to install MS Win XP? Ideally I could install the new drive, boot from the rescue media, and from that TI rescue media process, restore the image from the Ext. Drive.

Is that the correct thinking on my part?

Thanks again!

 

Yes, your thinking is correct. I would recommend you do a test restore to be sure everything works before you have an actual need.

 

is in fact your original idea a straight bootable clone
where recovery is a simple change in the BIOS boot order

as mentioned the tradeoff is you wont be backing up multiple states of your install
generally clone utilities have no problem going from a small drive to a larger one, its the other way round that is problematic