Copying the contents of a Hard Drive and creating images

by jakeblue Thu Jan 22, 2009 8:58 am

Believe it or not when you buy a new hard drive you cant simply copy and paste the contents of the old HDD to the new one and expect it to boot up.

You actually require a program like Norton Ghost to make a mirror of your old drive. There would be other programs that do the same thing but check them out first. It’s a simple process, its just a matter of selecting the source and the destination and it does the rest.

Another useful function you have with software like this is the ability to create an image of your hard drive. This is extremely useful when you are setting up your operating system. My recommendation is install your OS and other software and make an image of your drive and save it on your backup partition. (Click Here to learn about HDD partitions.) Importantly make the image before you connect to the net or copy any backed up files to the drive. This way you have a fresh install that isn’t tainted by any viruses etc. So next time you need to reinstall you just restore the image and this will save a lot of time.

The thing with installing an OS is you usually are prompted to adjust settings during the install, so you cant just leave it go. With restoring an image you get it started and you can go and let it do its thing and its quicker overall anyway.

Again keep this post going guys add some suggestions or better ideas.

by **Boyo** Thu Jun 03, 2010 7:14 pm

Does anyone know a free program to do this? XD

I'd like to make a ghost copy of a pc with all the files, programs, networking settings, etc on it in case anything goes wrong with that pc or another one in the office.

The pc I'd like to ghost is a dell with two hard drives in it. Both are the same kind, Western Digital, and same size if that helps at all. I'd like to keep one in it (ofc) and use the other as the ghost copy.