atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories copying a hard drive

I bought a external hard drive and would like to have an exact copy of my PC's hard drive on it.
I'm not sure if it's possible to copy the operating system and all programs from one drive to another. I was wondering if I could just drag and drop everything using explorer? I know there are tricks to ghosting a voicemail drive so I figure there must be something to know before I try to do this.
Mark

get yourself a copy of norton ghost, it will do exactly what you want it to do.

If your external drive is large enough, sector it! Then use ghost. The program will guide you. If your OS is pre XP the older dos version is included with ghost.

I'm XP SP2 and the PC is a 60 gig and the external is a 250 gig. Do you know where can I find instructions on how to divide it in half J ?
That's a great idea by the way.

I'll go shop for Norton Ghost. That's funny because one of the reasons I'm doing all this is to get that damn Norton Anti-Virus off my PC.
Mark

Use the disk manager snapin.

Go to run> cmd> diskmgmt.msc

This will allow you to do exactly what you need. You other option is to use VMWare and clone you physical machine into a virtual machine and build your PC from scratch. This will allow you to still use all of your old programs but have the speed of a new load, new registry, etc. VMWare has a physical to logical machine FREE for download. I have used it numerous times.

https://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

hey G thanks for responding, you know the Embassy Suites in Charleston has a free happy hour from 5:30 to 7:30 every night. I stayed there 4/11 & 12/08 nice town.

I went to the diskmgmt in xp but I couldn't figure out how to partition from there. I am a long stretch from a computer guy I'll google VMWare and see if I can figure that out. Gotta take the wife to dinner now, before she gets nasty.
Mark

Mark,
If you are not a computer guy, I would stay away from VMWare, it can be a bit of a pain. I would also look at Acronis True Image Home, it lets you create an exact image of your hard drive, to your external. If your hard drive crashes, you put in the new one, boot off the Acronis disk, and restore the image back to your hard drive. I think you can even schedule it, so you always have a recent backup.

In that case, you may want to look at this link:
Norton Removal Tool
It has worked for me. If you decide to run it, the following 2 steps will make it easier:
1. Update Windows XP with all the Critical Updates foe your PC from Microsoft Update.
2. Quit any other programs running.
Depending on the version of Norton you have, it can be a lengthy process, but far better and briefer than doing the whole disk.

your right I've already used it as a test on my kids PC, it was a long process, I also did some searches for Norton and symantec files and folders, found a few and deleted them. Then still had to clean the registry a little. I used safety.live.com an MS on line program to clean things up when I was done, seemed to work well.
My office PC is the heartbeat of my business so I needed to make sure I could get rid of it nicely before I do it here. I think I'm about ready. I've tried a trial version of ESET anti virus on the kids PC and I think I like it, Probably going to install it on my office system as soon as I get this back up drive worked out.

To give a bit of a background, consumer/home antivirus programs can be notoriously difficult to uninstall. One of the reasons is the fact that many viruses/malware, once arriving at your machine, will first try to disable the security programs, or alternately just delete certain settings so they can attack while seemingly the antivirus is still running.
Corporate/business versions are lighter on the touch, on the assumption that knowledgeable specialists are in charge of the computer resources.