How to image or clone a Windows XP laptop

I have an oldish Dell laptop with XP installed. It is likely that that programs and data on it will not be needed. But...

I'm considering wiping the HDD and reinstalling XP but would prefer to ensure it can be reinstated to its current state. And I'd also like to be able to get at all the data independently.

The HDD is c.60 Gbytes with a total of about 14 Gbytes used.

To deal with the second requirement first. I could, presumably, copy the data folders, My Documents, and any other data folders, to an external drive.

As for the first requirement, what's the best way of going about it and what (preferably free) software would do the job?

I have used Clonezilla several times to both clone and image hard drives. Worked perfectly.

http://www.clonezilla.org/

Edited by deleted (Fri 17-Aug-12 14:43:28)

Given that there's about 14 Gbytes of data on the drive I presume a DVD can't be used, or can the image span discs?

Can use an external drive though having it on optical disc(s) has portability advantages.

I've never attempted taking an image directly to DVD always to external drive or flash USB, so I have no idea if it would support spanning multiple DVDs on the fly.

I'd be inclined to write the image file on an external drive and then use something else to handle splitting it and wrting it out to DVD.

For cloning a drive don't you need a drive of the same or perhaps larger capacity? Or can you make an image of only the required XP OS files etc.?

Edited by 4M2 (Fri 17-Aug-12 15:40:13)

Yes - if you ever come to restore a clonezilla image back to a disk - the disk needs to be the same size or larger than the originally imaged disk - even if the actual amount of data stored is much smaller.

One technique to mitigate the impact of this is to defragment the partition and then resize it down to close to the size of the actual data on it. Then take an image of the now smaller partition.

In reply to a post by GeeTee:

One technique to mitigate the impact of this is to defragment the partition and then resize it down to close to the size of the actual data on it. Then take an image of the now smaller partition.

Thanks - I didn't know that one could do that: I thought that if the XP OS occupied a partition then it couldn't be resized.

I was more thinking that it may be required to reinstate the driver contents back to the original PC so that wouldn't be a problem.

Having checked further there's no data on the PC, it was all held on the servers at the location the owner used to work (she was given permission to take the PC with her when she left). There's lots of specialist programs though, including the Welsh language extensions to MS Office .

It's been a long time since I used it but I don't think XP comes with any tools capable of resizing its own base partition (Win7 does).

However it's possible to resize it using the likes of a GParted Live or SystemRescueCD disk. The GParted partition manager will happily resize NTFS. Care needs to be taken to resize by moving the end point of the partition rather than the start, and a thorough defragment In XP before starting is a good move.

XP will run a chkdsk at the next boot/

I've never had it go wrong on me, but resizing partitions should not be taken lightly and a backup of the contents should always be taken before doing it. e.g. Something as simple as a brief power cut in the middle of the resize procedure will leave a very broken mess on the disk.

Right - I use EMP http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Partition-Master-Hom... for that kind of work but that was with a drive that I wished to reformat and wanted to remove a NTFS partition. I setup the drive (which had XP installed on it) in an external enclosure, removed the partition and reformatted the whole thing NTFS.

Dells and many of the larger OEM's use a special MBR which allows for a complete system reinstall from the hidden partitions so if you want to keep this feature, watch what you're doing with partitioning software! You've discovered Hiren's so this may not be a problem.
Likewise, you'll need to image the drive rather than any partition. I believe Hiren's contains imaging software such as older versions of Ghost. You can retrieve the executable and create your own bootable imaging media to suit your needs.
Whilst imaging to optical media is possible (Remember the original restore disks?), it's not really advisable. I use a spare SATA 2.5" drive in a cheap USB enclosure but you can also image over a network. If a dual layer DVD is fitted, you may be able to copy the resulting image to a 9Gig DVD later and retrieve from that.
Some time ago, Acronis DI was available as a free and fully functional download from somewhere like GiveAwayOfTheDay. It may still be kicking around somewhere. Ghost was included on the boot floppy that accompanied early OEM recovery sets.

You can use your Hiren's CD to recover the serials for XP, Office and perhaps other installed software and as long as you have like for like media (Office 2K3, XP Home/Pro OEM etc), you can reinstall using those serials. If you still want the Welsh language pack for Office, download the relevant file here and run it after Office is installed.

Regarding drivers, these will be available from the Dell site but another recommendation here for an easy life is Driver Pack Solution. This will install all necessary drivers in the correct order automatically and they'll be up to date.

As I've now got the laptop into a good working state suitable for its new function it's unlikely that I'll need to rebuild it and preserve the existing stuff. If the owner decided she no longer wants to retain the legacy stuff than that's fine, I can just rebuild XP on it. But many thanks to the link to the Dell drivers .

I've now been told none of the specialist software on the laptop is needed so I can do a full rebuild.

I'll use Belarc to get the licence keys as needed. The link to the Dell drivers will be useful, thank you. And as the c.60 Gbyte HDD is partitioned 18/30 which is rather limiting for the C: drive, it'll be a good opportunity to just have the one partition.