Copying HDD

hi guys! my hard drive's pretty old and kind of making a weird noise the other day and i was thinking about asking for a new one for christmas. how would i go about copying my old hard drive exactly to the new one (like all the short cuts and programs would work and i could still use my 'my network' links/short cut icons to get to my server and stuff)? do i have to use that ghost program? if so, where can i DL it? thanks so much!

cynthia

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Cynthia :)

"Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?" - Gilda Radner

You could use ghost, but you wouldn't be able to download it for free.

You could also hook up the new hard drive as the 2nd drive, then copy and paste everything onto the new hard drive. This way theoretically should work, but will probably end up causing an issue or 10.

I don't know of any free programs that will do this, but then again I still have 4 more hours at work to search for one too .

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A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. ~Bruce Lee

Stuff that will work but costs money:
Norton Ghost
Copy Commander
A Physical Copier (fastest & most expensive)

Stuff that is free but may work:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilit...andimage.shtml

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"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."-Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
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There are not that many decent free ways to do this, here's one application that I haven't testeed myself: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/hdclonefree.html -- http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ should have a clone tool as well.

Sometimes the new HDD will come with software that allows you to clone your drive.

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aww ghost isn't free!? i thought it was. how much does it cost?

is there some way i can set it up so that. like, once a week my pc automatically copies my one hdd exactly to the other hdd? like a backup or something? so that if hdd 1 fails sometime, i can just take it out and start working right away with hdd 2? that's rock my world! that'd be an awesome christmas present to ask for, too . . .

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Cynthia :)

"Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?" - Gilda Radner

If you buy a Western Digital or Maxtor hard drive from Best Buy/CompUSA, inside of the package it will have a bootable CD that will allow you to do a complete copy of your old hard drive to your new hard drive. The utilities are also available for download (or used to be) from their website.

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Along with Seagate as well. For most of these companies you need only one of their drives to be in your computer to use their tools.

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You registered for QuakeCon on April 30, 2008, 6:56 pm. You were # 366 to sign up for QuakeCon!

That's right, most HDD's do come with tools now, as I stated.

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Learn about the man behind the screen @ Ogden2k.net

If you want a backup hdd, and you have 2, you might consider setting up a RAID. This will back up your hdd every second, then if one fails you still have the other.

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A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. ~Bruce Lee

could a retard like me handle something like a raid setup? i've seen somebody set up a raid before, but it's been a while and i've never done it myself . . .

probably just going with the new hdd copy disk thing . . .

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Cynthia :)

"Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?" - Gilda Radner