How to forum: What is the best way to clone a hard drive?

A clone is an exact duplicate of a partition or drive and would be useful if you just want to swap one for the other. You're probably looking at imaging which makes a compressed file or set of files which can be restored by the same program. If you're willing to pay for a decent utility, I use and like Acronis. If you want free, some here recommend Clonezilla. I've tested that one and it works but I prefer Acronis for some of it's other features such as allowing one to extract individual files from an image. In any event, these programs work by creating bootable CDs which are used to make images or restore them. Acronis can make an image from within Windows as well. To restore an image with Acronis, you can boot from its original CD or one it can make for you if installed on the hard drive. If you have the image stored on another hard drive...internal or external...you navigate to it and select it as the source. You then select the target drive from a list of what's available and just let 'er rip. It's fairly simple after you've done it a time or two.

and their excellent and free cloning software that comes with each new drive. Based on Acronis BTW. Super simple, you install it on the working hard drive. You then attach the new drive either as a slave or by using an external USB case. You run the program from the host PC, it sets up, and makes an exact duplicate of that drive. In case of a catastrophic failure all you have to do is swap drives. Done.

I've done this more times than I can count. I have clones of this PC, my network/web server, and my three laptops. I clone my PC about once a month to keep up with additions or deletions. The other PCs after any major changes or a ton of Windows updates.

To reclone the drive again after changes, you have to do a quick format of the drive to be cloned so that the Seagate Disk Wizard sees a blank drive. BTW, all my PCs are IBM/Levono. The program also clones the hidden restoral partition.

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