cloning a hard disk

[chef]

My fathers pc has 2 hard disks, 1 for programs, 1 for documents.

The Programs (c hard drive is on its way out as it's approx 6 years old and is used 24/7 as its the home media center. It's not dead yet but not very stable. I'm almost certain it's the hard drive that's dying and so intend to replace it like for like.

Replacing the drive is easy as it's a Western Digital 500Gb Caviar Blue SATA drive, however, what's the best way to clone the disk to an exact replacement disk without having to re-install everything again.

Any suggestions/recommendations for a good disk cloning program?

 

[doodab]

I use Paragon partition manager quite a lot. It'll let you do resizing and so on as well.

 

[Cliphead]

I've been using Clonezilla for years and works every time. Just make a boot CD and follow the prompts.

Oh and totally free.

 

[gingerjedi]

I'd backup docs and profile and start afresh, after 6 years (assuming it's XP) that machine will be dog slow.

Use Ninite - Install or Update Multiple Apps at Once to take the pain of installing all the usual extras, ooh and download SP3 before you start.

Thats just me.

 

[chef]

Nope not XP, it was originally but was upgraded to Win7, the disk is 6 years old though.

Will try clonezilla as its free and then look at paradigm if not.

Cheers folks

 

[Sockpuppet]

Just check if the new drive is a 4096k sector drive that you align the sectors when you do the clone back to disk.