cloning hard drives

[deRusett]

I fix peoples computers as a hobby/beer supplier, A computer I fixed recently had a Bad Hard drive, I suggested he replace it, and gave him an extra hard drive of mine to tide him over till he could go to the city and buy one.

well he is going to the city this week, I don't want to go back and install all his software/OS over again, ideally I want to drop the new HDD in as slave, and copy everything from my HDD over to it, then pull mine out, and master the new drive.

I've never done this before so I have no clue if it would work or not. and I don't want to use a workmate as a guinie pig.

any Free softwares that can do this?
Possibly DOS commands, I could build a dos disk if needed
it is an Older ( Pre AthlonXP) AMD based COmpaq which does not Like Koppnix Live CD, so anything not run from the hard drives needs to be Floppy size.

thanks for any help or suggestions
I'll be doing this on the 14th or 15th of this month, so if you are bored and have 2 HDDs feel free to give it a try

 

[XWRed1]

Try g4u.

Boots off a cd or floppy, uses NetBSD. Has support for common nics, will let you image to/from ftps on the lan or between drives. I used it to replace a hard drive on a friend's laptop, worked fine for me.

 

[GOD Macktruck]

Norton Ghost, floppy, $i have no idea

in fact i just finished cloning a drive about 10 minutes ago.

very easy

: ) :

 

[batboy]

I always use Norton Ghost. That's about the best cloning program available. But, it's not free, sorry. If you get Norton Systemworks Professional, that's a package deal with Norton Utilities, Antivirus, Ghost, and other stuff.

I have found that the Utilites program is well worth getting. You can run the Utilities off the CD, so if you are working on a friend's computer, you don't have to install it. It has DiskDoctor to check harddrives and my favorite, WinDoctor to clean up registry errors. I have found the Speed Disk is much better than the Windows degragger too.

I see Norton Systemworks Professional (the non Professional edition don't have Ghost) at Best Buy for $59 to $69, but sometimes they have a $20 to $30 rebate. I bought my sealed copy on eBay for $10 plus shipping.