I need to clone my hard drive

[flcusat]

OK guys, my desktop computer has some bad sectors in the hard drive. I need to put a new HD on it. What would be the best method to transfer what it is in the old HD to the new one, cloning? If that is the case what software do you recommend? I understand that whatever it is in the portion damaged is not going to be recovered but I might be wrong. Thanks in advance.

[Springs]

knoppix.

Great utility for doing a lot of stuff. FREE
dd_rescue a command in knoppix. FREE

http://www.knoppix.org/

Or you can use Adepto in Helix. Also FREE
Has a simple to use GUI and interface for Adepto

https://www.e-fense.com/store/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=11

dd_rescue is great for hard drives with some damage as when it hits a bad sector it slows down and keeps making passes to get the smallest amount of loss. But it gives you a flat out clone. With DD and other programs is if they hit a bad sector you get a bad block.

[flcusat]

dd_rescue is great for hard drives with some damage as when it hits a bad sector it slows down and keeps making passes to get the smallest amount of loss. But it gives you a flat out clone. With DD and other programs is if they hit a bad sector you get a bad block.

Could you elaborate more on this? Is DD_rescue and DD the same? If that is the case looks like there is a contradiction on the above statement. I need you to be more explicit;I've never been in this situation before so I have zero clue about this.

[Chris-L5S]

i use to use Norton's Ghost, but it has been a while since i have had to do this sort of work so i googled "Free Hard Drive Cloning Software" and found this page.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/05/5-free-apps-to-clone-your-hard-drive/

i am sure one of these will get you going.

[J.Azaria]

Try UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD, Google it).

It's a recovery and boot CD w/ a bunch of utils both for data recovery and for cloning/duping a drive. Something on there will help you out.
It's kind of in the vein of the Knoppix suggestion above but, imho, a bit more friendly if you're completely new to this.

Hardest part should be d/l and build and burn the .iso, and I'd suggest using a computer other than the one afflicted (if you can) so as to avoid working the [already flakey] drive. Instructions on the site should be easy enough.


EDIT--
Start here: http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm
and check the FAQ if you run into trouble.

hth.
J.

[flcusat]

Thanks for the info. I haven't had time to look into this yet.

[Springs]

There are a bunch of variants on DD.

Some you have to set the block size while cloning. If it is the type that doesn't error out completely it will stop copying the size of the block it is looking for. Like I said before... straight DD + Bad block or sector = STOP

I have found that dd_rescue has thrown away the lease amount of data and saved a few hard drives for my clients.

But the Adepto in Helix is real easy to use. Plus some hardware just won't boot with some distros.

http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/

[flcusat]

knoppix.

Great utility for doing a lot of stuff. FREE
dd_rescue a command in knoppix. FREE

http://www.knoppix.org/



Is not this just for Linux?

[J.Azaria]

Is not this just for Linux?
Knoppix IS Linux (or at least it's a distribution thereof)

The cool thing about Knoppix is that it is what's called a "Live CD" meaning you can boot it and run it off of the CD w/o any install or writing of files to the HD. This also makes it quite useful for recovering stuff from HDs (incl. Windows).

It's pretty cool and pretty easy but if you're not Linux familiar and/or of the less adventurous type, it *could* be a bit intimidating. That's the only reason I mentioned UBCD up top as well as it's WinPE based and so a slightly more familiar environment to Win users.
Other than that, either one should do well.
There are a number of other Linux Live CD variants out there as well if you're interested. Google is your friend. :)

[flcusat]

I already cloned the HD and have it working on the machine with Acronis True Image.
The new hard drive is 1.5T but it is still showing like the previous one (150GB) I'm on disk management right now, trying to increase the partition size but I can't find the way to do it.

[vette84]

You can't enlarge the partition natively in windows.

I haven't used TrueImage, but there should be an option to expand the partition as it's restoring.

[Springs]

gparted

[flcusat]

I did used Paragon Partition Manager. Free and very easy to use. I just bought a second 1.5 TB hard drive for may desktop and configured it on RAID 1. It should be finished doing the mirroring in about 4 hours.
The machine is way faster now, since the cache to the previous HD was 8 and the new ones are 32.