How to Ghost a Hard Drive to Another
Ghosting or cloning a hard drive is done for a variety of reasons but the most popular are upgrading to a new larger hard drive or as a backup in case of a hard drive failure on the primary drive or problems due to a virus. When a hard drive is ghosted, everything on the original drive including the operating system, program files and data, is mirror imaged onto the second drive. This allows the second drive to be used exactly like the original drive.
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Instructions
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Purchase or download a ghosting or cloning software program. Symantec's Norton Ghost or Partition Magic are just two of the many programs on the market for doing this task.
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Load the program on your main hard drive of your computer. This can be accomplished by either putting the disk in the drive where the install program will start automatically or clicking on the downloaded install program icon in your download directory or on your desktop.
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Connect the second hard drive to your computer using either an empty drive bay slot on the computer or connecting through the USB port with an adapter cable.
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Start the cloning program by clicking on the program icon on your desktop.
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Follow all onscreen instructions to create a ghosted or cloned drive. Depending on the software you have chosen, the command for this process may be "Ghost," "Clone," "Mirror Image" or "Copy a Partition."
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Remove the second drive after the process is complete if you wish to save the drive for emergency use only. If you plan to make the second drive your primary hard drive, replace your existing hard drive with the cloned drive.
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Tips & Warnings
The exact instructions to follow for ghosting a hard drive are difficult to relate as every program on the market has a different process to accomplish the task. Some cloning programs, such as Ranish Partition Manager, must be used with a floppy drive. The computer system must be set to boot from the floppy first, instead of the normal boot sequence of "C:" Programs such as this should be used by advanced computer users only.
