Hard drive partitions

[copiman]

I am cleaning up my sisters PC. Keep getting this pop up that space on the D: dive is low. Attached is a pic of the drive. Just in case you cant read it here is the deal;

OS C: 207GB free of 222GB

Recovery D: 4MB free of 9.99GB

I am assuming that the D: holds only the info needed to do a recovery. Is there a way to increase the size of the D: just a bit as to make the popup go away? Never dealt with this area before and not quite sure how to handle this properly.

 

[evan.briggs]

There is a few Linux programs that you can burn to a disk that will do the job. Try either partition wizard or parted magic.

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[copiman]

Thank you. I used Partition Wizard (Free). Borrowed a little from C: and gave it to D:

I just downloaded the free version to the PC and used it. Did not have to burn disk. Saw a lot of other functionality on the free version as well, like this one:

Hard Disk Copy: Copy an entire disk to a different disk quickly and easily with data clone technology. Backup disk data without data loss.

Need your opinion on this one. Could this be used to copy a hard drive to an external hard drive and then copy back to the original hard drive or new hard drive later? I ask because I'm trying to learn more about backing up a PC before I work on them, so when I crash the sucker, I can reload to prior to me touching it.

 

[evan.briggs]

Are you saying you want to clone the original hard drive to a totally different hard drive so you can fall onto that in case you crash the original? If so yes that will work fine.

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[copiman]

Actually, I'm not sure. Here is my scenario. Prior to working on a PC, I want to create a complete back up to an external drive. This back up should be everything that is on the PC. This includes OS, files such as docs and pictures, and all other apps and programs like adobe to microsoft office. Then work on the PC. If during my working on the PC I trash it, I can load the back up and put the PC back to the way it was prior to me working on it.

In my research on this, I think I know, but would like some clarification. My understanding is you can clone a hard drive to another hard drive. Then if you need the clone, you just swap hard drives. This is not what I want to do at this time.

Then there is imaging the drive. You imaged the drive to an external drive. The when you need it you load it back to the hard drive in the PC, using the software you used to create the image.

I assume that if I trash the PC, it would be best to wipe the drive and then load the image back. Not real sure about this.

The key here is to be able to put the PC back to exactly how it was prior to working on it.

 

[evan.briggs]

Honestly the easiest way would to just clone the hard drive. All you would have to do is pop the cloned hard drive in and it will work like nothing ever happened yes you can make an image of the current hard drive but will take more work to image another hard drive. Does that make sense?

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[copiman]

Yes, that does make sense. If I were doing it for my PC, cloning would be fine. Since I'm working on someone else's PC, I don't want to replace the hard drive. I just want to reload everything back to the hard drive in their PC if and only if I mess up. So if I don't need the back up that's on the external drive, I can just delete it.

I think image is the way to go. My problem at this point is how do I get the image back onto the drive in the PC? It looked like you just select restore, but in my research on the internet I read something about a boot CD. Not sure exactly they mean. See, if I get to the point that I need the image put back on the PC, the system would be trashed.

I hope this helps in understanding what I'm trying to say.

 

[Mossiac]

I think I get what you are saying. Copy drive if things go bad put copy back on drive. Could this be done with a Linux live disk? My theory here is if you do it with a live disk then if you need to put it back pop the live disk in and restore.

I think the idea is that using the same OS to make and transfer the image there is less to go wrong.

Can't honestly say as I haven't managed to unintentionally knacker a PC to that degree.

Mossiac

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[iPwn]

CloneZilla. It will make bit for bit copies of a physical disk or just a logical partition. The only problem I've run into with CloneZilla is going from a larger disk to a smaller disk... can't do it.

There is also another program called EZ Gig. If you purchase an Apricorn adapter, they usually ship with an EZ Gig IV bootable CD. There's a Windows version (linked above) that you can use too. It will make bit by bit copies of drives and you can configure to ignore size differences in drives.

 

[copiman]

CloneZilla. It will make bit for bit copies of a physical disk or just a logical partition. The only problem I've run into with CloneZilla is going from a larger disk to a smaller disk... can't do it.

There is also another program called EZ Gig. If you purchase an Apricorn adapter, they usually ship with an EZ Gig IV bootable CD. There's a Windows version (linked above) that you can use too. It will make bit by bit copies of drives and you can configure to ignore size differences in drives.

Can you elaborate on going from a larger disk to a smaller disk? Also, I want to image the drive because I was told if you clone the drive you have to swap drives to get what you want.