Bit-for-bit copy of hard drive in Windows? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

Clonezilla

What about CloneZilla?

Clonezilla, based on DRBL, Partclone and udpcast, allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC's Classroom C, Clonezilla SE was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously. It took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to all 41 computers via multicasting!

Solution 2:

Norton Ghost

Do you really want a bit-for-bit copy? Do you actually want to preserve the bits that live in the free space on your disk? Do you actually care about what's in the free space?

I think you just want to get all your data from the old drive to the new drive (including the nitty-gritty stuff, like boot sectors and partition tables), but you don't need bit-for-bit.

My personal preference for moving entire partitions or drives is Norton Ghost.

Solution 3:

EaseUS Todo Backup Free

I like EaseUS® Todo Backup Free 3.0 for disk images and cloning.

EaseUS Todo Backup Free integrates disk clone and powerful data backup & recovery. It provides the richest set of backup & recovery features

• Disk/partition copy and clone: Copy disk/partition or dynamic volume in a file by file mode to save time and space.

• One-click universal restore: Restore the system to dissimilar hardware for hardware replacement

• One-click system backup: Just one-click to backup & restore your system and applications to an image in Windows or with a bootable CD.

• Backup storage: Backup system or data to a local hard drive, external hard drive, USB drive, CD/DVD or remote FTP server.