Creating an image of a hard drive

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s.dot
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Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by s.dot »

What software do you guys recommend for simply making an image of a hard drive?

I'm going to be messing with a laptop, so I want to take out the hard drive of it and make an image of it on my pc in case i mess it up. :)
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Kieran Huggins
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Kieran Huggins »

I've used Ghost enough to trust it... I'd just go with that. Boot CD, GUI: easiest thing I can think of.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Chris Corbyn »

dd

All I've ever used, without fail.

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/<disk_name> of=/path/to/image.img bs=16K
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by s.dot »

Hmm, what if I just hook up the hd to my ide in my tower and copy all of the files to another hard drive
same thing?
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Benjamin »

Yes and No - Read up for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_image

Notably:
An ordinary backup program only backs up the files it can access; boot information and files locked by the operating system (such as those in use at the time of the backup) may not be saved. A full disk image contains all these, faithfully replicating all data. For this reason, it is commonly used for backing up disks with operating systems, or bootable CDs and DVDs.
Also, images are backing up the actual file system data as well.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by s.dot »

Sweet, good call.
So basically if I'm only worrying about files on the drive being saved, I don't need to image.
Hmm - I think I'll purchase norton ghost just to be safe.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Benjamin »

Why waste money - gparted works just fine and is open source.

EDIT: OR dd if you're in Linux as Chris mentioned earlier. ;)
Last edited by Benjamin on Mon Jan 12, 2009 5:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Chris Corbyn »

It sounds like you really need to correctly image it ;) If you mess the drive up having all the files (most likely with different attributes/permissions) alone will be a treacherous path back to where you started. Having an image will be a godsend!

And I agree, just use a tried and test open source solution like parted or dd. There are other tools like testdisk that I have used to successfully recover files from a corrupt hard disk before too (FAT was corrupted but files were all still there).
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by JAB Creations »

scottayy wrote:Hmm, what if I just hook up the hd to my ide in my tower and copy all of the files to another hard drive
same thing?
That's why I loved Windows 98! I have had a two hard drive setup for years and I used to setup 98 exactly the way I wanted it and then would copy everything (except the page file) to my D:\. When 98 would goof up on my C:\ I'd simply boot to D:\, copy everything to C:\, reboot on C:\ and I was up and running in literally only a few minutes.

Too bad XP isn't like that. :|
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Chris Corbyn »

That wouldn't work if you put the disk into another computer surely... it needs a MBR, which you simply can't get from copying files alone.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by s.dot »

So, I completely wasted my time making an image of the disk. :x
All I had to do was run chkdsk /r and it fixed it (error was UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME).

HOWEVER, now it randomly shuts off. Obviously I think this is a heat issue, but the vents appear clean and dust free. So I'm thinking it may be one of two things

1) Failed/failing fan
2) OS failure to tell the fan to work and how much to work (is this possible?)

So other than cleaning out the dust what can I do? Is there such software that monitors cpu temp?
I'm not ready to buy a new fan (basically because getting inside of a laptop is a PITA) or install a clean OS yet.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by Chris Corbyn »

Can you hear the fan going? A simple script like this should make your fan whirr pretty loudly after a few minutes:

Code: Select all

<?php for ($i = 0; $i += ++$i; ) ;
If the fan has jammed/failed then you really need to fix that or you'll cause even more problems.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by s.dot »

Oh yes, I hear the fan quite well, LOL.
Not sure if this is good (cuz I can hear it), or bad because it's severely overheated probably.
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Re: Creating an image of a hard drive

Post by VladSun »

Take a look at its S.M.A.R.T. reports.
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