Thinkpads Forum

I've never done this before, cloning a hard drive. I've read about Acronis and others here on the Forum.

Is there a FREE cloning program I can use to clone a hard drive and then transfer it a to clean hard drive? The old hard drive works fine....

Just curious what's out there...also I don't want to pay..

Thanks,
Ron

I used Clonezilla successfully a couple of months ago, and it is free. Instead of cloning the drive though, it is better to clone the partitions so you don't lose space on a larger hard drive (if it is larger than the original).

http://clonezilla.org/

GomJabbar wrote:I used Clonezilla successfully a couple of months ago, and it is free. Instead of cloning the drive though, it is better to clone the partitions so you don't lose space on a larger hard drive (if it is larger than the original).

http://clonezilla.org/

That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for a really helpful posting, DKB.

I use HDClone Free Edition:

http://majorgeeks.com/HDClone_Free_Edition_d3809.html

Did I mention I want to clone the old hard drive to a dvd (possibily only the os, not programs)? Not another hard drive at the time....sorry..

Ron

I believe you can copy an image file of the hard drive to a DVD. Later you can restore the image to a hard drive (partition).

EDIT: Or I suppose you could burn the image to the DVD (as opposed to just copying the image to the DVD) and make it bootable (haven't tried this though).

GomJabbar wrote:I believe you can copy an image file of the hard drive to a DVD. Later you can restore the image to a hard drive (partition).

We're talking about Clonezilla, right?

I'm reading on their site how to clone the drive. I'm not ready yet but maybe this weekend I'll give it a go..

Any other tips for me. I want to make this as simple as possible...

Thanks,
Ron

Well, I think Clonezilla will do that. I've only used the program twice, and that was 2 or 3 months ago. I'm not really that familiar with it.

GomJabbar wrote:Well, I think Clonezilla will do that. I've only used the program twice, and that was 2 or 3 months ago. I'm not really that familiar with it.

ok, thanks......

maybe someone else has used it more frequently and lately...anyone?

appreciate the comments,
Ron