How to clone the contents of one hard drive onto another

backupdisk-imagefile-transferhard drive

Can anyone recommend a different CD bootable utility I might try to clone a hard disk drive?

I've so far failed to perform the seemingly simple task of cloning the contents from a small hard disk drive onto a larger one.

Apparently Hitachi (target) doesn't offer a bootable utility for this. But, that's okay because Western Digital (source) does!

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for DOS (CD)

But, when I boot from its CD, it immediately reports that it now doesn't have a SATA CD driver?!?

blah blah blah

Virtual disk drive : C: (128 Kb, 512 bytes, 512 entries)

CD-ROM Device Driver for IDE/ATAPI, Ver 1.5 rev.016
Copyright (C) 1997.  All rights reserved.

**Error:  No CD-ROM drive found, please check power or cable.
**Error:  IDE CD-ROM device driver NOT installed!!

Caldrea DR-DOS 7.05
Copyright (c) 1976, 1998 Caldera, Inc.  All rights reserved.

A:\> echo off
NWCDEX.EXE Version 2.18 CD-ROM file handler.
Copyright (c) 1992, 1997 Caldera, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Driver not found: 'generic'.
A:\NWCDEX.EXE requires a Driver name to be specified.
Invalid drive specified
Command or filename not recognized
Command or filename not recognized
Command or filename not recognized
Command or filename not recognized
A:\>

Well, there is a floppy version:

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for DOS (Floppy)

So, I pried a floppy diskette drive from an old computer, hooked it up, created the boot disk, rebooted the PC, and it failed too!

Starting Caldera DR-DOS...
Can't load BDOS kernel file: A:\IBMDOS.COM
System halted.

I reformatted to try again, but then I then couldn't create the disk.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools - Diskette write-protect tab must be closed.

The tab was closed. I toggled it and retried several times. I even tried different diskettes. Same error each time. I guess my ancient floppy diskette drive must be broken.

Can anyone recommend a different CD bootable utility I might try to clone a hard disk drive?


Update: I've salvaged a second floppy disk drive from an old computer. It also insists that the diskette's write-protect tab is open. Windows will format it, so it's Western Digital's issue.


Update: Perhaps it's a problem with Windows Vista. I was able to create the floppy diskette with Windows XP.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools diskette was created successfully

Best Answer

The canonical commercial example is Ghost; good open-source alternatives include FOG or Clonezilla.

(Also useful to know is you can make a bootable DOS USB key with the HP Drive Key Boot Utility. Never touch a floppy disk again.)