It’s still Symantec Ghost for me, but the next time around I’ll try free again.

Recently had to build a Linux system out of a Asus EEE Box PC.  The first step was to clone the hard disk.

There must be an open source utility I can use!
I thought …

So I tried G4L, and it was horrible.  It’s horrible because the user interface is difficult to use.

I wasted 1/2 hour on it.  And then tossed the G4L bootable CD hit the shredder.  It was so bad that I didn’t want anyone else to grab it off me.

Broke out a WinPE-based Ghost 8.2 disk utility.  It just worked, and that also reminds me that I need to create my own WinPE build (I’ll blog about it soon).

Since I was able to copy my Asus EEE BOX PC hard disk, I was able to build Linux on it.

And have a bit of relaxation time, to look around to see what other free hard disk copy utilities there are.

Here’s 8:

XXClone

  • Windows based.
  • Free version only does FULL backups

PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

  • Linux based boot disk
  • Looks very impressive

EASEUS Disk Copy

  • Supports IDE, SATAI, SATAII, SCSI, Firewire(IEEE1394) and USB drives
    (Some products don’t support SATA …)
  • EaseUS also have a freeware partition manager

DriveImageXML Private Edition

  • Runs under Windows, and uses the Volume Shadow Services service.

CloneZilla

  • supports multi-casting.

Macrium Reflect – Free Edition

  • Runs under Windows
  • Supports CD/DVD burning.

HD Clone – Free Edition

  • available under Windows and as a standalone boot.

G4L

  • Linux based
  • Awful user interface.

Version two lists out all the other utilities I’ve heard of.