Is this Possible?

Apologies, I know this question has had several airings, but please indulge me ( not sharpest knife in the draw ) my 60 gig harddrive (WinXP SP2 & all updates) is now 5 years old and running as sweet as a nut, but in all probabilities (according to law of averages) I have another year left, and this is what I would like to do..............make a complete duplication of my hardrive, so that if the inevitable happens...........I just take the duplication and fit into my computer as if nothing has happened, and woila another hopefully 6 years of computer bliss............am I asking too much, please tell me there is a answer.........and how, don't forget not sharpest knife .......if there is a solution to this dilemma would be most grateful.

I have True Image ver 8

 

Yes m8 just use your Acronis True Image to clone the hard drive with your os on it

 

Cheers for the quick response, will get me a spare hardrive fit it as slave, do the business with ver 8 True Image, and then make the Slave the master and it should boot up as if nothing had happened, is that what you are saying, it is as easy as that

 

Just about. Be sure you remove the old drive before the first successful bootup since Windows can get confused when it has 2 identical drives with the OS on it and the same partition signatures. After you have done the boot with the clone as master, you can put the old drive back in as a slave drive if you wish.

Although it should be fine cloning within Windows some users report less problem if the cloning is done from the Rescue CD version. I don't bother cloning so I can't make any informed comment on it.

 

Seekforever thanks : If you don't mind me asking why don't you bother cloning.................Is there a better way, if so I am all ears

 

Its as simple as that peter4076 I have done it several times and keep a cloned os for both my boxes

 

Hi peter4076,

When you make a clone of one hard drive to another hard drive, it requires you to first open the computer, then add a hard drive, clone the drive from the original installed drive, then remove the newly cloned drive, and put it aside and store it. If you make a full drive image (which you must do with version 8 of True Image to image all of the drive), you can store that image on media (CD or DVD) or on an internal or external hard drive as a .tib file. This way you do not need to put in a new hard drive until one is needed in the computer. You just restore the tib file image of your old hard drive to your new hard drive when it is needed from the media you used to store it. It will accomplish the same thing as a clone, but without the need to be swapping hard drives in an out of the computer. When it's time to replace the old drive, you just boot up with your recovery boot rescue CD and restore the image you made to the new hard drive you install when you remove the old drive. Personally, I think the best and safest way to store images is on an external USB hard drive. You will be able to keep more current backup images than you would by cloning, as you can make an image file of your hard drive as frequently as every day and store in on the external hard drive if wanted. That way you never lose any data and stay as current as possible.

Let me make one important point once again. With version 8 of Acronis True Image, the MBR and Partition Table are not included in the image file you make of your hard drive, unless you image the complete hard drive with all partitions - not just the C active partition, but all partitions you might have on the drive, by checking the top most box next to the drive that states "Drive 1"). When you check the box by "Drive 1" all partitions will also be checked by the program, if you have other partitons present on the drive. This must be done to make the full image so it will be bootable when restored.

...Allen

EDIT: Didn't see seekforever's post, as I was composing my post...so excuse any repetitions that might be made.

 

I don't think it's necessarily better and in fact the clone function is made for doing exactly what you want to do; replace an old drive with a new one.

I never make an image of a whole drive, just the C partition. This is because I keep all my important data files on a separate machine on my system and the stuff in the other partitions of the disk I'm replacing doesn't really matter if lost. If there are some files I would like to keep I usually just copy them somewhere else on my PC (each one has 2 drives) or gigabit network and copy them back later.

When I get a new drive (and this doesn't happen very often) I usually boot up the XP install CD, then I partition and format the drive. Even though the C drive formatting is overwritten, this gives me some confidence the new drive is working. I then restore my C partition from a backup image.

As you can see, making a clone is a lot faster and copies all the partitions. Why do I do it this way, no reason other than I am not in a hurry and I like to do these things just as a memory refresher. The same reason I always install XP and my apps when I get a new machine instead of trying to tweak an old image to run on it.

 

I wish to thank you all for contributing to this thread, will now do a printout for easy reference, once again Muchos Grazias