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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Trying to save an image of my laptop - need freeware software recs
 
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Spacewolf
May 19, 2014
 OK, so. I have a laptop on its last legs. It's going to get replaced eventually, but until then I have a Western Digital portable hard drive (it advertises as 1 TB but only appears to have 930 GB capacity when I look via windows) I can use for backups.

I would like to image the laptop to the portable hard drive.

Should be easy enough, were the software WD includes with their hard drive not *absurdly* slow - and I don't think it does an actual image. Because I'm only doing this *once*, I'm looking for freeware.

So, here's the specs.

My system runs Windows 8.1 x64, but by the time I get a new computer, who knows, it might use Win 9.

I'm backing up/imaging a drive that says it has 672 GB with 416 GB free.

* # ? Nov 16, 2014 18:59
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Alereon
Feb 6, 2004

Dehumanize yourself and face to Trumpshed
College Slice
Macrium Reflect Free is an excellent choice.

* # ? Nov 16, 2014 19:29
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KillHour
Oct 28, 2007

Spacewolf posted:

OK, so. I have a laptop on its last legs. It's going to get replaced eventually, but until then I have a Western Digital portable hard drive (it advertises as 1 TB but only appears to have 930 GB capacity when I look via windows) I can use for backups.

I would like to image the laptop to the portable hard drive.

Should be easy enough, were the software WD includes with their hard drive not *absurdly* slow - and I don't think it does an actual image. Because I'm only doing this *once*, I'm looking for freeware.

So, here's the specs.

My system runs Windows 8.1 x64, but by the time I get a new computer, who knows, it might use Win 9.

I'm backing up/imaging a drive that says it has 672 GB with 416 GB free.

Just so you know, the reason for this is that hard drives are measured by manufacturers as powers of 10 (so 1TB = 1,000,000,000,000 Bytes), while hard drives are measured by windows as powers of 2 (so 1TB = 1,099,511,627,776 Bytes). The technical term for the way Windows calculates this is GiB (Gibibytes). When you do the math, 1,000GB = 931.32...GiB. The other gig or so is taken up by the formatting of the drive.

* # ? Nov 21, 2014 14:56
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Spacewolf
May 19, 2014
 I figured it was something like that, but knowing for certain is a good thing. Thanks for the info.

In the event, what ended up happening:

My old comp used Win 8.1.

My backup computer, an Acer 5250, uses Win 7.

So we wound up doing a file-by-file backup of C: on the old machine to the portable HD (took the better part of a day, ugh) and then transferring the stuff that was actually needed onto the Acer.

Took forever.

I then made very sure to use Macrium to save a backup of the Acer's hard drive onto the portable HD, since the thing had hordes of space left over.

* # ? Nov 21, 2014 16:33
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Trying to save an image of my laptop - need freeware software recs