Good Drive Cloning Software

[Mitsu3000gt]

What I am trying to do is make sure that I have everything copied off of my failing (but still working) hard drive before I format it and send it back to Western Digital for warranty replacement. I have thousands and thousands of my photos on there, some not organized very well, why is why I need to make sure I have them all. I've got them backed up in other places too, but I want to make sure I've got all the same files across all drives.

Is there a good free tool that can compare an entire drive to just a folder on another drive, tell me what's different, and they copy over any files that exist on one but not the other? That would save me so much time.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. I'm not sure if "drive cloning" software is what I'm looking for or not, because I am looking to compare an entire drive to just a folder on another.

[Zhariak]

Use the "dd" command on linux

image the drive either to a file on another drive (keep in mind the file will be the size of the drive your imaging), or simply write it to another drive that has equal or greater size

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by Zhariak
Use the "dd" command on linux

image the drive either to a file on another drive (keep in mind the file will be the size of the drive your imaging), or simply write it to another drive that has equal or greater size

I am using Windows 7...not sure if that makes a difference.

I could just drag and drop everything over again, that would be easy, the problem is that the one drive is failing so it's transfer rate is about 2MB/s and it will take days to transfer over everything again. That is why I want to single out only what isn't identical between the one failing drive and the folder on the new drive, and transfer only what is necessary. That drive is going to fail at any moment.

[v2kai]

used this before, pretty simple and easy to use:
http://www.roadkil.net/program.php/P...pable%20Copier

[Anomaly]

Try downloading Windows Robocopy? Probably one of the fastest ways

[Mitsu3000gt]

Both look good - thanks guys. I'll give it a try when I get home from work tonight.

[n1zm0]

you want to get absolutely all the contents off your HDD pretty much right?

i used VirtualLab data recovery when my caviar black shit the bed, managed to get all of it back

it does specific recoveries for PC partition, emails, photos, deleted files etc, theres a selection at the menu : 'what do you want to recover'

[Mitsu3000gt]

Originally posted by n1zm0
you want to get absolutely all the contents off your HDD pretty much right?

i used VirtualLab data recovery when my caviar black shit the bed, managed to get all of it back

it does specific recoveries for PC partition, emails, photos, deleted files etc, theres a selection at the menu : 'what do you want to recover'

I don't actually need to recover anything. The drive functions reliably (for now), it's just SLOW (2MB/s transfer). Because it was so slow, I was moving stuff over a little bit at a time to my new drive, and when I thought I had finished transferring everything, I noticed the folders were larger on the old drive still, and there is WAY too much stuff for me to go through individually and see what I forgot to transfer over. So, I need a "drive compare" tool, that will show me what isn't the same between two folders and move the missing things over to make them the same.

I need something that will compare my slow drive to a folder on the new drive, (or even just compare 2 folders) tell me what is missing, and move over only the missing files. That is exactly what I want to do. It would take days to move everything over at once because of the super slow transfer rate, and I wouldn't be surprised if the drive failed during that process.

[Mitsu3000gt]

I ended up using a piece of software called "Beyond Compare" (how appropriate haha).

It was fantastic, has a ton of options, and did exactly what I needed. I highly recommend it if anyone else needs a utility like this. I found a few things that I would have been kicking myself for later had I accidently deleted, including one entire vacation worth of pics.

[eblend]

Originally posted by Mitsu3000gt
I ended up using a piece of software called "Beyond Compare" (how appropriate haha).

It was fantastic, has a ton of options, and did exactly what I needed. I highly recommend it if anyone else needs a utility like this. I found a few things that I would have been kicking myself for later had I accidently deleted, including one entire vacation worth of pics.

It is a great utility, we use it at work to compare code in scripts ect.

[Anomaly]

Originally posted by eblend


It is a great utility, we use it at work to compare code in scripts ect.

I just downloaded it after reading that, and it's a great tool for comparing/reviewing cisco configurations, Thanks!

[FixedGear]

Bump to a 7 year old thread

Any suggestions for free Windows 7 disk imaging software? I've used Acronis True Image for the last 10 years or so, but the new version is not working for what I need. Can anyone recommend good imaging software? I need something with a boot usb capability that can also access NAS.

Cheers mates

[The_Penguin]

Macrium Reflect. I've used it for years, it totally rocks.