suba

what is the best software to backup the whole hdd on a laptop before turning it on for the first time. i want an image of the hdd as it is, fresh from openning the box. since it's on a laptop, cant do hdd to hdd imaging, so would need to image to usb external hdd.

Markus

Attach an external hd, boot from a cd that has symantec ghost on it and then I thin you will be able to clone the hd to the external drive. Might not be that quick

If warranty isn't an issue and or the hd is easy to remove then pull it, stick it in an enclosure and hook it up to antother machine and use ghost to image it

This info assumes it is a pc. If it is a Mac and you have another Mac and they both have FireWire and youve got a FireWire to FireWire cable then pibthe new Mac into target disk mode and connect it to the other Mac and use disk utility to make a cd/DVD master of the hard disk that will appear

Ant

windows 7 has this software already installed

ScoobyDoo555

Slightly off-topic, but there's also a load of new macs that don't work in Firewire target mode.

GazTheHat

I've been using MS SyncToy, it's free and will clone the HDD and changes. So the first time will take ages, but after that it will only be the changes.

James Neill

iTrader: (1)

Use Macrium Reflect. It's free.

P1Drifter

iTrader: (7)

dont know how anyone can recommend a symantec product !

Markus

Good point. Is there a USB target mode? If not then it is a great shame as TDM is/was a very handy feature, I used it a lot of times to get at a machine which would refuse to boot and I could mess with the system

ScoobyDoo555

Don't know bud. It's a valuable feature that I have already missed!!

Markus

It seems USB Target Disk Mode does not exist, the firewireless machines seem to however support the ability to boot via USB, in fact, seems any Intel based mac can boot via USB, here is Apple's support document on it. Not ideal, but you could setup an external boot disk, bring up the startup manager, and boot from that and then tinker with the disk.

suba

yeah, used to use ghost. old skool.

but now dont have ghost and need a backup imaging from laptop hdd to external usb hdd. i have used Acronic TrueImage 10 before but somehow i cant boot it up with the bootcd on a lenovo X201.

will give clonezilla a go.

Dedrater

http://filehippo.com/download_oo_diskimage_express/