Hard drive failing

[girtha1134]

I have a laptop that the hard drive is failing and i was wondering if there was a way to make an image of the drive onto a new drive because i have no way of reinstalling the os and drivers


in essence i need to make a bootable exact copy

 

[Emerald]

Acronis True Image

 

[girtha1134]

thanks i'll check it out i hope its free

 

[fzabkar]

Seagate has a free downloadable OEM version of Acronis True Image:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard
http://www.seagate.com/support/discwizard/dw_ug.en.pdf (User Guide)

Western Digital also has a free OEM version of Acronis True Image:
http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/AcronisTrueImageWDEditionUM.pdf (User Manual)

 

[Emerald]

the OEM versions require one of the drives to be from Seagate or WD.

the 2010 trial version was a full version that worked for 30 days. Only needed it for a day to image my drive

 

[fzabkar]

ISTR that an earlier version of DiscWizard incorporated an Alt+T+O hotkey (Techical Override) that allowed it to work with non-Seagate drives.

BTW, if your drive has bad sectors, then you will need imaging software that can work around bad media.

Some freeware cloning tools are ...

dd_rescue: http://www.garloff.de/kurt/linux/ddrescue/
ddrescue: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/ddrescue.html

Comparison between ddrescue and dd_rescue:
http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Ddrescue

Ddrescue can perform multipass cloning. It clones the easy sectors on the first pass, and attempts the more difficult ones on subsequent passes. It can also clone your drive in reverse, thereby disabling lookahead caching. It keeps a log, allowing it to resume after an interruption.

The following thread discusses various freeware and commercial cloning tools:
http://forum.hddguru.com/the-best-disk-cloning-hardware-software-t10396.html