Cloning hard drive

[ayabrea38]

I am not very tech minded,but my other half picked up a pc tower from the flea market and used a few of the bits and bobs from it,but then decided to see if the hard drive was up to much.To cut a long story short,he thought it may be a good idea to 'clone' the hard drive in our main computer to this hard drive as a mega back up type measure.The problem is neither of us know where to start.What sounds like a good idea would be a good idea if either of us knew exactly how to.He is a bit more tech minded than me but I am the one who find out how to do things so can someone point me in the right direction please?Much thanks

[MarkRae]

I use this:
http://www.acronis.co...g/products/trueimage/

[VHG]

If the other PC is now not working (because he has removed the parts) then the hard disk will need to come out and be used elsewhere.

The two choices are to install it inside your existing PC case as a second hard drive, or to buy an external hard disk case and put the hard drive in it.

Then you can use a product like Acronis True Image to clone your current harddrive to this new hard drive.

You need to find out how big the hard drive is in the "new" tower to see if it is worth it and has room for the clone (if it is an old hard disk it may be very small compared to newer hard drives)..

You also need to find out if the "new" hard drive has a IDE connection or a SATA conection (to know how to "fit" it).

If neither of you have done this sort of thing before there has to be a bit of "trial and error", but then that is the best way to learn.

[VHG]

One word of warning.

If you are going to play around moving hard drives and trying to back them up then make sure ALL the important files on your EXISTING hard drive are backed up safely.

It is VERY easy to accidently delete everything off the "wrong" hard drive, or to format the "wrong" hard drive and lose all your data.

If you have an external hard drive already then copy/backup everything off your existing computer before you start moving disks around and cloning them.

If you have NOT got an external hard drive it may be a good time to buy one.

[ayabrea38]

Thanks for those answers, they are both IDE and the "new" hard drive has enough room.Sooo as whatever info I rearly need is backed up,is it a case of downloading the Acronis programme(thanks for link MarkRae)as a trial version and playing around?
If info is backed up we cannot go too far wrong...can we?

[Wak]

For years I used a good, FREE program called XXCOPY to clone harddrives.
Google for it, should show some results.