The thing that basically lets you upgrade to a bigger HDD by shifting the entire content of your current drive to the new one? I'm trying to find something like that for Windows. Basically, I've found that my System drive (my C drive, where I have the OS and all utilities installed, as opposed to my D drive, where I keep all games, movies, pictures, .cbr files, etc) is wanting in capacity, and I want to shift or "clone" the entire disk onto a larger disk, because I don't relish the thought of spending a lot of time re-installing Windows, downloading all the Windows Updates, all the utilities, so on and so on. I'm aware of the Windows Easy Transfer tool, but unfortunately it only covers documents and the like, and not programs. I could use some help in finding a HDD cloning utility that works.

I have some requirements when selecting such a cloning utility.

It must support Windows (This puts Clonezilla right out. It said it supported Windows, but when I burned the iso file I downloaded from their site, all the files on the CD were for Linux)

It must support IDE drives (I know, ancient stuff, right? It took me a while to move from SCSI, too)

The less I have to pay for it, the better (Call me paranoid, but it seems to me that a program of this type that I'd have to pay for, such as Norton Ghost, would do something sneaky like leave a tracking program or adware bot somewhere on the newer drive during transfer. Kinda how like the AMD/ATi Catalyst update installer packages will install a demo or something if you choose Express Install instead of Custom Install and then un-ticking the box next to "Install 10-day trial of buhbuhbuh".)

The more rave reviews, the better.

It does support Windows. You're supposed to use it as a boot disk.

I think there's a package you can buy at most office supply stores that will do this for you. Comes with a cable and stuff maybe? I've never done it, I don't trust such things, so I usually move stuff manually on my portable hard drive.

You might try this one, it should suit your needs. http://runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm For best results, you'll want to squish down the partitions as much as possible before you image. I'd recommend something like gparted.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I do have a IDE/SATA-to-USB kit. Couldn't I just use a tertiary drive (i.e. the D drive, with at least 300GB free) as a buffer during transfer?

Drive image XML is very hard to get working, Ive created more than a few iron bricks using that... But when it works you have a great program, IF your moving to a bigger drive using the same filesystem DI-XML *should work well... you'll still need to run bartPE or some other bootable OS that doesn't boot from the working drive.

Honestly Norton Ghost, its well worth the $70 and it feels really nice knowing you have an infallible, guaranteed working backup. Nothing is better than ghost NOTHING. It has never failed me...

If you need some options to play with check out Windows Ultimate Boot CD Use a slipstream XPsp2 cd or Sp3 cd and you can install Drive Image XML as a default utility

Norton Ghost is only good because they bought it from a company that knows how to write software, iirc. I'm surprised they haven't stuffed it so full of crap that it's useless by now.

Yeah, a lot of the free stuff is going to consist of bootable Linux stuff, it's fine, it'll still clone your Windows harddrives, you'll just be booted into Linux at the time via USB key or CD.

So, like Knoppix? I'm only familiar with it because I've used it to boot into AmigaOS Classic a couple times.

Yeah, like Knoppix or MEPIS, though a ton of distros will let you do a live boot now days (including Ubuntu). Some live boots are merely meant to run a specific set of tools (like repartitioning, etc.).

Depends. The PS3 doesn't recognize partions beyond the first on a disk and ones that are formatted in something other than FAT32. So for that you wouldn't be able to. If you're talking about copying the data on the system drive over there, that could work. The only time I've had a problem with it was when the disk wasn't large enough to handle the images. Now I squeeze them down as much as possible before I image them and I haven't had a problem since then.

Slow your roll, pardner. I used the PS3 utility as an example of what I'm looking for in relation to a task I want to accomplish in Windows. That probably wasn't clear enough if you thought I was trying to backup my PS3 files all this time.