Exact duplicate?

[JimL]

Once upon a time you could get a hard drive exactly like the one your system runs on and make an exact duplicate on it that you could swap with the regular system drive and boot. They called it "cloning."

Nowadays, all I can find are hot shot applications with poorly named "intelligent" features requiring a college degree to operate and you still can't swap the drive out. And I've asked this question in a dozen places in, it seems like, as many years with always the same "Get Ghost," or "Get Acronis," or get whatever powerful, therefore complicated application with supporting boot-DVD's that is oh so easy for the young bucks who live to fiddle with computer guts.

I need an easily done backup clone for my T60P, not a powerful application. To use I have the exact same hard drive by name and number that came in and is in it. Am I looking in the wrong places for a straight up clone program?

PLEASE!! No declarations about what a no brainer thus and such an image manager/restoration controller/backup handler is. I've bought 4 of them with big names and big prices and they all require truckloads of fiddling. I've heard it all. I know very well that truckloads of fiddling is exactly what young, feisty, multitasking, guru types think makes it so fun/easy. Pretend I'm a 95 year old has-been who simply wants to push a button.

It is probably a certainty that someone will say they have to know that I am using XP Pro SP3 updated to the minute. Not with a true clone - assuming there still exists such a simple thing.

A special thanks to those I have encountered here who won't get all riled up because I'm tired of geniuses who can't help non-geniuses - who don't always give complicated answers to simple questions. That you can reply in simple English raises my appreciation of your input immeasurably.

To clone or to smart-image-fiddle-clone. That is the question.

JimL

[Neil]

Hey Jim, I'm a lot like you. I'm not young and I don't have the time to figure out how to use coomplex software. In the past I've used HDClone for just the task you are trying to do. I have not used the current version (been using Acronis most of the time of late), but the old one that I did use was very simple. And there is a free version!

[ziemeck]

Hi!

I once upon a time shared your pain.
I greatly appreciated that:
http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

It is worth every $ it costs.

Of freeware - Ranish Partition Manager
http://www.ranish.com/part/
Note: RPM does not support USB, use Multibay adapter.