Cloning Vista HD's - Solved

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

The subject of making a clone of a Vista hard drive has come up on many internet forums.
I've been involved in several such discussions myself.
Attempts to use the older versions of Ghost, for instance, that will run from a boot floppy or CD have so far failed.

In my own quest for a workable, FREE, solution, I hit upon something that I had not previously considered.

With every Seagate or Maxtor hard drive I've bought in the last couple of years, there was a MaxBlast CD.
I've always just tossed them in a drawer and forgot about them.

While reading about FREE HD backup solutions on a web site, I was reminded about Maxblast.
So I dug out one of the newest CD's (Version 5) and loaded it (Installed) into my PC.

One of the options I found was to make a Maxblast Bootable CD, from which I could do disk to disk cloning of any OS or drive format.

I made that boot CD and took it to the computer that I'm using to test Vista Ultimate.
It has two Maxtor 160gig SATA2 drives.

I booted the Vista PC with the Maxblast Boot CD and selected to do a disk clone.
As with Ghost and many cloning programs, Maxblast asked me to designate which drive would be the source and which drive would be the Target of the Cloning (Disk Copy) operation.
That was easy and I was quickly in the process of doing a clone from C: to D:.

The most amazing part of this story is that the clone was able to boot my Vista PC with NO problems.
Did I mention that Maxblast is FREE?

Looking around the WWW, I found this site where you can download the Maxblast install program:
http://www.softwarepatch.com/utilities/maxblast-security-dl.html
Your download should start shortly after you get to this site.

The file to download is: MaxBlastSetup.en.exe

It's a 104 megabyte file, so a broadband connection is best for this download.
Of course it would be easier to just borrow the Maxblast install CD from a friend or local computer shop. Wink

Once installed on your PC, you can use it to make the Maxblast boot CD.

Good Luck and Happy Computing, Very Happy

The Doctor Cool

PS: MaxBlast is powered by "Acronis".

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

I was hoping you found a solution to making an IMAGE, but this is way better than NOTHING. Wink

Thanks for doing the checking.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Look at the program......!!!

It does have the capability to make an Image, and restore one too.

I just have not gotten that far with it yet. Rolling Eyes

That's food for a whole different thread. Wink

Or at least a new post.

I was asked on another forum, however, if the program would work with two drives of mixed brands.....and it does.

I copied a 160 gig Maxtor to an 80 gig WD, with NO problems at all.
In the process, a small unallocated area on the WD was removed.
The program asked and I gave it permission to do that. I like that! Razz

Laters!

Doc Cool

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

OK, that sounds good - I was just going by what you posted. Hope that part works, too

I've pretty much found that they will work on others (unless specifically stated otherwise somewhere in the documentation)

Well, keep playing (& don't forget to post the results) Very Happy

Thanks

PS - caught your addition "...powered by "Acronis" - that explains a lot right there as I believe Acronis itself will work. (can't really try it, but that IS my hypothesis)

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Yup, I'm still playing. Trying to make an Image to my 80 gig WD drive, from my 160 gig Maxtor drive.

I did find out that you must have at lease ONE Seagate or Maxtor drive in the system for this program to work.

I ran the disk WIPE program on the 80 gig WD and now I'm trying to image the 160 and put the Image File on the 80.

So far it's fighting me.....doesn't want to accept the file name I've given it for the backup image file. I even let the program name the file for me and it still won't take it.

At several points during the processes, I've been offered 40% off on the Acronis Home program. I don't want to buy anything, , , I just want to find out how far this program will go for FREE.
Right now I'm stymied.

Doc

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Well, experience won out....

I figured out that the image backup failed because the TO drive was not formatted.
I had set it up as one big partition with FDISK, but I did NOT format it. The DOS format on an 80 gig drive takes quite a while. Crying or Very sad

So to do the format as quickly as possible, I booted up with my PM8 boot disk and let Partition Magic do the format for me.
It only took a few seconds. Wink

Then with the drive formatted as FAT-32, I re-ran MaxBlast and started the Disk Image operation again.
This time it's working just fine, as I type this.

I'll try to restore it to a blank HD later and see what happens.
Maybe not tonight. I've got a PPV wrestling program to record.

Doc Cool

bern · Joined: Mar 12, 2007 Posts: 1432 Location: ann arbor

Sounds very promising. I wonder if it will work also if the target HD is an external USB drive.

I also have a couple Maxblast disks in a drawer someplace... Let's see...

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I encourage any techie-type with time on their hands and a spare HD or two laying around, join me in this attempt to get as much data on MaxBlast (Acronis) as possible. I can only do just so much. So far Disk Clones, of a Vista Ult hard drive, have worked quickly and efficiently and without problems. I've successfuly done it twice now with no problem.
On the second attempt, the receiving drive was a WD, with the original drive a Maxtor.
Since MaxBlast is a Maxtor/Seagate program, given freely with every new drive, at least one Maxtor or Seagate drive must be in the system for the program to work. No problem here, since those are the only drives I will buy.
I have some WD and Samsung drives that I've removed from old PC's that were given to me.

So far I've not been able to get an Image Backup File to restore. I keep getting "Image is Corrupt" error messages.

I've determined that much of the problems I've experienced are due to my own unfamiliarity with the MaxBlast program.

There are a lot of instructions that are just NOT given.

So any assistance will be gratefully accepted and appreciated.

The Doctor Cool

Nisseviking · Joined: Aug 04, 2004 Posts: 47

Hi all
Have been using MaxBlast for some time now.
I regularly put an image of the complete hard disks of my computers on an external drive (Maxtor) connected via USB, that is used solely for this purpose (otherwise it is shut off)
It actually saved my a** once when after some stupid actions on my part I couldn't get my cellphone connected to my laptop.
MaxBlast requires that at least one of the disks involved in the operation is a Maxtor.
However this can very well be external, as is the case with my laptop that has an IBM internal disk

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

It would be nice if we knew exactly what the program was looking at to be able to tell, then we could just "fool" it into thinking it was. But I don't have a problem with using one of the "needed" drives. So for me, not really that big of a deal.

Keep the info coming, it is GREATLY appreciated.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Oh, there are volumes of info recorded on every hard drive.
Who made the drive, the date and time, the serial number, probably even the wife's name of the final inspector. Who really knows?

There are programs that dig out some of that info and display it.

Anyway, since Maxtor/Seagate is a world leader in HD technology, the number of people who can benefit from MaxBlast are almost countless.

Ok, I have not tried the external, USB, HD thing yet, so maybe I should give that a go! I just happen to have one.....actually two. Rolling Eyes

I have a big one and a little one. I know the little one is a Toshiba laptop drive and I don't have a clue, what's in the big one. I set that up a couple of years ago and currently have NO recollection of what I put in that enclosure, except I think it was about 40 gigs.
But as long as I start with my Maxtor drive as the Original, it should work.

Doc Cool

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

One thing I've noticed about MaxBlast, is that by running in a DOS environment, it doesn't have to compete with Windows and other programs and runs at the best speed available from the hardware.

There are many programs like Ghost that I've always liked running in DOS because of the speed at which they can run.
It's too bad we can't surf the net and download files in DOS. That would be so much faster.

I've got a very fast system here, but Windows really loads it down, even with all my tweaks and twiddles.
But, any program running in DOS can just about fly.

I back up my whole C: drive with Ghost in less than six minutes, using FAST Compression.

I've not timed MaxBlast yet, but I can tell you it's REALLY moving!!!

Doc Cool

goretsky

Hello,

You can download the latest version of MaxBlast direct from Seagate's web site here. They acquired Maxtor in 2006. Seagate's DiscWizard, a similar tool branded with Seagate's name can be found here

While the downloads are free and do not require any sort of registration, the license stipulates it is for customers of Seagate and Maxtor, so you would need to own one of their hard disk drives in order to use the product. I doubt this will be a problem for most computer owners, as the likelihood of having one or both of these brands of hard disk drives somewhere is probably relatively high.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Licensing restrictions aside, MaxBlast is FREE with every Retail Boxed Maxtor or Seagate hard drive.
The program actually LOOKS to see if either a Seagate or Maxtor drive is attached to the system. If not, it will give you an error message and fail to go any further.

Well, last night I did an Image backup of C: to an External USB drive.
The backup went just fine, but when I did a restore to an internal HD, the restored HD failed to boot.
That's par for the course.

So, my final thought is that I will only use MaxBlast for disk cloning , but rely on my trusty old "Ghost" for Image Backups.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread.

The Doctor Cool

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

Well so far, all the disks I've ever seen come with a disk WERE for cloning anyway so it surprised me when you said this one had the imaging function.

Will be interesting to see what they come up with next. Especially when the Solid State HD become the norm.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I did a clone from my Maxtor 160 gig drive to my (brand unknown) 40 gig USB External Drive. The cloning operation went off without a hitch.
The Dell even tried to boot off of the USB drive, but, the boot failed. I guess the external drive was just too different than the internal to make windows happy.

I'll keep putzing around with it to see just what I can do with it.

The Doctor Cool

bern · Joined: Mar 12, 2007 Posts: 1432 Location: ann arbor

Maybe I'm missing some thing here. The problem is that Ghost won't make a bootable image of a Vista drive. We have discussed a variety of mechanisms to accomplish this without real success.

What about Ghost 14, or Acronis True Image? Anybody tried either of these? They apparently claim to be able to do this.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Well, I don't much want to buy either of those programs, just to see if they'll work. Why don't you do that and let me know? EH? Laughing

My goal is to find a FREE program that will do the job.
I already know that MaxBlast will make a bootable Clone of Vista, and it didn't cost me a cent.

I've got enough HD's laying around here that I can easily designate one as my Vista backup drive. No problemo! Wink

Doc

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 924

goretsky

Hello,

The programs are free if you have an OEM Maxtor or Seagate disk drive. You just have to download them after agreeing to the license, since OEM hard disk drives do not normally ship with an installation disc.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky