What I want to do is very simple, and that is clone a boot drive to a new drive. Sounds simple, right? And with old school DOS bootable Ghost, it could not have been easier. Only problem is, DOS Ghost is next to impossible to get a hold of, or to get it working in such a way that you could boot from a USB flash drive, NOT a CD or heaven forbid a floppy disk. So how the hell do I do it? I've seen other tools, but none were as easy or effective as good old DOS Ghost. I had a bootable USB image laying around somewhere, but knowing me, I lost it. If anyone knows where I can get it, or an alternative that will do what I want without having to do a million other things or learn how to build an entire Linux shell from scratch (looking at you, Clonezilla), please let me know, because this one has been bugging me, and I'd like to get the software bit working -before- the upcoming drive swap. Thanks.
Macrium Reflect Free does this pretty easily http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx Initially only works within windows though, not sure if that is what you are after?
I need something that can boot from a flash drive, not rely on an OS to work. I don't think you can/should clone a boot drive that's actively in use.
Macrium will quite happily clone a boot drive that is in use. All the good ones do. I've used it a couple of times, as well as Acronis, without any problems.
Hmm. Interesting. Only issue is that I need this software to work on Windows Server 2008, as that's going to be the victim, and I ain't playing $160 for it.
Hence why I specifically wanted bootable tool. They generally don't care what OS you have. But at this point it almost seems like the easiest thing to do is just restore a damned bare-metal backup onto the new drive (which by the way Server 08 does beautifully), at least I wouldn't have to stuff around with any other tools.
lol - there's nothing special about Clonezilla - you download the ISO or IMG file, write that to a CD or USB stick, stick it into your PC and boot it up! Follow the prompts and you have an image of your drive! That's not hard, is it?
I've tried doing that before but it didn't play nice. I can't remember what error it threw, however it looked like it was quite broken. Might give it another crack and see.
Clonezilla only has three main requirements: filesystem must be clean (CHKDSK C: /F in Windows), the source or destination cannot be a RAID volume, and the destination for writing an image must be the same size or larger than the source (cannot resize down for a smaller destination volume). I use Clonezilla to clone Windows systems all the time. Quick and easy.
I run dos ghost from a USB bootable all the time without issue, well the 2TB issue is there, but thats more a sign of ghosts age then its competence. Poor old ghost is so old it has a limit on size that is 2TB, which i found out the other day. Just get 3 things: 1. Ghost 2. whatever your flavour of bootable usb formatting tool 3. Dos 6.22 boot disk image. Format usb stick, with bootable files from dos 6.22 image, throw ghost.exe on it and boot from it.
Any Linux Live CD or USB image contains the "dd" tool, which will copy raw data straight off any disk or media. dd was first written in 1968, and since then nothing else has come close to it in functionality for reading and writing disk images. I'm amazed at how much money businesses used to spend on ghost when dd did everything for free.
11 replies and no ones referenced the ultimate boot cd? 1. http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html 2. Move to USB 3. Use one of the 10 different tools it offers (including macrium reflect).
I've had pretty good experiences with Copywipe (DOS/USB/CD) and Easeus partition manager (Windows, but does the copy in a pre-boot environment).
Been using this lately myself: http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/home-edition/ As long as target disk size > source disk.
w/o reading the whole thread; I've used cloneZilla, downloaded the "clonezilla live x64" (clonezilla-live-1.2.12-37-amd64) and just used it, no linux building or any other crap involved and cloned my SSD w/o a glitch.
dd if=/dev/sd(x) of=/dev/sd(x) bs=8M Worked for me just fine the few times I've done it. The most recent was going from HDD to SSD on my GF's PC. Only issues doing this with Windows > XP is that you'll have to repair the MBR for it to boot properly.
I find it's easy with Acronic TI......but I can never get it to make the image bootable. And yes I have reinstated the boot image. Never seems to work for me.....I always end up using windows repair.
I use hdd duplicator - as long as target drive same size or larger no problem You may have to extend partition afterwards http://www.shintaro.com.au/products/05_external_hdd_enclosures/duplicator/
