How to Duplicate a Hard Drive

Duplication of a hard drive provides a back-up of important data.

Backing up important data is practicable with the ease of duplicating a hard drive. The cost of hard drive space is now below 10 cents per GB of data, allowing an affordable option for safe data storage. A separate hard drive provides assurance that important data is safe from viruses or deletion. If the data is needed in the future or is needed at an alternative location, the duplicate hard drive is available for access.

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Computer hard drive
SATA hard drive docking station with USB connection
USB cable

Instructions

- 1
  
  Purchase a Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive. Any standard hard drive size, including 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch, provides an acceptable size for duplication.
- 2
  
  Purchase a SATA external hard drive docking station. Place the bare hard drive into the docking station cradle, matching up the male and female SATA connections. Connect a USB cable from the SATA docking station to a computer USB port.
- 3
  
  Format the hard drive. Use the same format type used on the source hard drive such as NTFS, FAT or FAT32. To verify the format type on the source drive, open the hard drive in “My Computer” and click the right mouse button while the hard drive is selected. Select “Properties”. The hard drive formatting is labeled next to “File System”. Use the software that came with the hard drive to format the drive.
- 4
  
  Purchase and install hard drive duplication software. The software chosen must allow full cloning of the original source hard drive. Some popular software titles that are capable of this feature include Norton Ghost, Arcronis True Image Home, DriveImage XML or HDClone.
- 5
  
  Begin duplication of the hard drive. Follow the specific steps of the duplication software to complete the clone of the source hard drive.

Tips & Warnings

Windows 7 users can back-up hard drive data using the "Backup and Restore" features of the operating system.
Several hours may be required to make a duplicate of the source hard drive, depending on the amount of data stored on the drive.
Purchase a duplicate hard drive as large or larger than the original source drive.

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Maximum PC: Windows 7 backup and restore

Photo Credit hard drive image by Graham Lumsden from Fotolia.com

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How to Duplicate a Hard Drive

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