Originally Posted by jephree

The language technicalities are important here.

I saw that the Western Digital Lifeguard had the option to copy files.

This will not/ did not "clone" your drive. This will not make a bootable operating system. All you did was copy files. As in a data backup. Western Digital does not provide a "cloning" tool.

Your new drive should be blank before you "clone" to it.

its funny because when you download the program to set up the drive it specifically asks you "make a bootable drive", or an "extra storage" drive.
to me, when they ask if you want a bootable drive, i assume that it will clone the original. but you are correct nonetheless, the program does not clone the original.

last night i atttempted to clone the drive using hdclone 3.2 a free download. the process took approx 3 hours. the results were poor. the drive partially booted, but never froze at the windows xp screen and stopped at that point.

my next attempt i will try a different program above freeware, or i will have to load windows manually.

kh.

I assume that Western Digital just meant that they could make a Boot Drive as in creating a Boot Sector which will allow the drive to boot. It would not transfer an Operating System.

Maxtor/Seagate offers a Clone tool but supposedly just for their own drives. MaxBlast.

There are several choices of commercial software most running @ $80 U.S.

Another free idea is GParted.

With this you can Clone the drive but first you must create a partition the exact same size as your old hard drive (or old partition).

One example is in this thread:

http://www.d-a-l.com/help/showthread...hlight=gparted

this morning i used acronis true image and the clone was a success. :yippee: it booted from the new drive with no issues. i also installed my other 500gb drive and set it up as extra storage. but for some reason when i check it in properties it reads the same amount of memory used as in drive c, but the pie graph show the drive empty. any cause for this?

kh

How did you "set up" the second drive? What tools?

I'd suggest opening Disk Management and right clicking the drive in question and choose Format...

Disk Management = right click My Computer then click Manage then Disk Management

Originally Posted by jephree

How did you "set up" the second drive? What tools?

I'd suggest opening Disk Management and right clicking the drive in question and choose Format...

Disk Management = right click My Computer then click Manage then Disk Management

i set it up through wd`s program to add an additional storage device. i will try what you suggested............................