Bad Hard Drive

KAB · Feb 16, 2005

I have a hard drive on one of my computers going bad. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif The operating system is XP home. I am looking for a program to create a duplicate drive so I don't have to reload all of the programs that I have on this machine. What has anybody out there used?

I found 2 programs in a google search:
1. Acronis True Image 8.0
2. Norton Ghost 9.0

How are these programs?
Any others?

Thanks in advance as I will be away from computers for a few days.

Kurt

Nasty135 · Feb 16, 2005

Kab, I like norton ghost, Quick and easy use boot to floppy with two drives master and slave and copy . /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Currently I have a spare HD that has been cloned just in case ? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

gsxr1100 · Feb 17, 2005

I agree. Ghost baby!

JASTN70D · Feb 17, 2005

Ghost is the correct product. But if there is any problem with the partition on the drive like a bad block that is unmarked or the like it will not work. Before you do anything back up the drive and then run all tests

Soundguy · Feb 19, 2005

I've used ghost.. love it.

Soundguy

KAB · Feb 20, 2005

Thanks for the replies.

FYI. The problem with the hard drive has to do with the angle that the drive is positioned as to if it will work or not. (trust me.)

Not having with worked with PC's much in my computer experience, can you ghosts different sizes of drives? (assuming there is enough space on the drive being ghosted to.)

Thanks

Kurt

jwstewar · Feb 21, 2005

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( can you ghosts different sizes of drives? (assuming there is enough space on the drive being ghosted to.)
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Yes, Ghost will allow you to do this.

Our DBA at work just found another software called Acronis and really likes it. Seems like it had more bells & whistles then Ghost and even allowed you to do it while Windows was up and running unlike Ghost (which I'll admit it has been a couple of years since I used it) requires you to DOS. I think we are going to look at purchasing the server version as we've had some problems with Ghost working with Servers and with IBM's Tivoli product being reliable on bare-metal restores. Not what you want out of your disaster recovery software - oh, I'm sorry it is now Business Continuity.

Aronis Image Software

PBMAX · Feb 23, 2005

A PC rag I read did a comparioson of ghost and I believe the other that was mentioned, Aronis. They liked both but said Aronis is easier to use,for those who have not already bought into and used Ghost . I do recall them saying that it wasn't worth switching from ghost to the other, if you were currently used to ghost. They just felt the interface of Aronis was better for us rookies..... and trouble hounds...../forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif I'll try to remeber to look for the artcile this evening and post the run down for those inter rested. I think it was PC magazine I read it in.

KAB · Feb 26, 2005

Thanks to all.

The replacement hard drive had a utility with it to copy the data from the bad hard drive to the new one. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif No need to purchase another program. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Kurt