CPU
/ Processors
Cloning
a Hard Drive - Page 2
After successfully creating a bootable CloneZilla disc, the next step is to setup your system to boot from CD. If your system is already setup to check for a bootable CD on start up then then there is no need to make any changes at this point. For the rest of us will will need to enter the PC's BIOS settings. The boot screen of your PC will inform you of what key to press in order to enter the BIOS, its usually either the delete key or F1 but there are variations around.
Once inside the BIOS you will need to find the setting for the boot order, they are mostly found in the first menu option of basic BIOS settings but again different PC's will have varying options. Once you have located the boot order menu, Boot from CD needs to have a higher priority than the hard drive or your bootable CD will never be read. Don't worry about setting up your machine in this way, if your PC does not discover a bootable CD in the drive it will then go to the next bootable device which should be set up as your hard drive. Your operating system will then boot as normal.
Save your new BIOS settings and restart the computer. On the next boot your PC will check the CD drive to see if a bootable CD/DVD is found in the drive. Make sure you have your CloneZilla CD in the drive for your computer to locate. You may be asked to press a key in order to continue booting from a CD, if so simply press any key before the countdown completes. CloneZilla will then begin to load the required files into memory for the disk cloning to take place.
The
first screen that is presented to you is the display setting menu, there are
plenty of options here but we recommend sticking to the first 3 unless you
are sure you know what you want from the others. The first three options
give the choice of display size from 1024 x 768 down to 640 x 480. Select
one of these options and then be prepared to wait a few minutes while more
files are loaded to memory from the CD. It may appear that the computer has
crashed but the CD should continue spinning to let you know that something
is still happening.
Once that has concluded, the next choice is how you want to start to clone the disk. By that I mean do you wish to create an image file of the hard drive or partition for use as a backup later or to move to another PC or do you wish to transfer the entire contents of a hard drive or partition to an available hard drive straight away. Of course if you have already created an image file you also have the option to recover that image to a drive (this is for later) Select the option you require and press enter to continue.
We are going to look at creating an image of the disk for this article as its the easy efficient way of making a backup of your hard drive. Now we just have to negotiate through a small mount of jargon to get the job done. In order to get to the disk image menu you will need to select "device-image disk/partition to/from image" and press enter. From here CloneZilla will prompt you for the image location that is to be saved to or read from. Once selected this drive will be "mounted" with the data that CloneZilla requires for its task.
Recent Articles
Wii Black Edition - The New Black edition of the Wii gaming console is set to launch on the 6th of November. The new look will fit in with most entertainment centres with its new sleek finish.
Optical Media Types - All the Optical Media types available can be confusing. DVD+R or DVD-R for example. We give you the run down on what's what within Optical Media including new Blu-Ray recordable technology.
Cloning a Hard Drive - Create the ultimate backup by cloning your entire Hard-Drive. This can easily be used as a backup or for transferring hard disks. We check out CloneZilla a free tool to do just that.