How to Clone a Hard Drive With a DOS Command
Hard drives are the storage system of your computer. They hold all of the files, programs, pictures and video on your computer, as well as the data that your operating system use to run the system. The physical size of these drives has decreased greatly while their storage capacity has increased exponentially since their creation in 1956.
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Things You'll Need
- Secondary internal hard drive or external drive
- Drive image cloning software (see Resources)
Instructions
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Turn on your computer. If you don't already have drive cloning software, open your web browser (usually "Internet Explorer" or "Firefox") and search for one through a search engine such as Google. For this article, we'll use the program "XXCLONE" as an example (see a link to this program in Resources).
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Download the XXCLONE installation file and save it onto your desktop. Once the download is finished, double-click on the file and follow the instructions to install the program. You may need to restart your computer if prompted, so save any work you have open before installing.
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If using an external hard drive as the clone for your drive, attach it to your computer now. Verify that either the external or internal drive that will become the clone has enough storage space to hold the files from the original drive (if the original drive is holding 5 GB of data, the clone drive should have at least 5GB of free space).
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Open the XXCLONE program by double-clicking on the newly created program shortcut on your desktop. On the program window, select the drive you want to clone on the "Source Volume" drop-down list, and the drive you want to become the clone on the "Target Volume" drop-down list.
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On the "Operation Mode" tab below the lists, choose the first option ("Back up the entire volume by copying all files from scratch"). Press the "Start" button on the lower-right side of the program window to initiate the cloning process.
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Tips & Warnings
The cloning process can take 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on the size of the volume to be copied. There's a lot of free drive image cloning software available on the Internet, so you don't have to buy it from a store. You should update your cloned drive periodically.
Avoid installing or uninstalling any software or using the computer in general during the cloning process. This may leave the cloned image corrupt or unstable.
