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• Mirror your hard drive: two disk-copying utilities reviewed

Mirror your hard drive: two disk-copying utilities reviewed

By Robert Vamosi on 11 February 2005

If you need to roll out a standard software configuration across more than one desktop or laptop, you'll need an app that can make a mirror image of an existing hard drive.

For years, the venerable favourite for this process has been Norton Ghost, which used to require a reboot to DOS. With Symantec's acquisition of PowerQuest Drive Image, Norton Ghost 9.0 can now mirror a hard drive's contents without rebooting out of Windows. But that's something that Acronis True Image has been able to do for years. Add to the fact that True Image is much faster than Ghost and can also repartition and reformat a drive (something that Ghost still can't do), and you'll see why Acronis True Image is our Editors' Choice.

Acronis True Image 8.0 Read review Acronis True Image 8.0 is a first-class imaging program that makes it easy to copy the contents of a hard drive to removable media or to a separate disk or partition. We recommend it. Norton Ghost 9.0 Read review Norton Ghost, once the drive-copying software of choice, doesn't have the performance or the breadth of tools offered by rival Acronis True Image.

Topics: disk, mirror, true, utilities, ghost, norton, drive, hard, copying, image, acronis

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  shofisoe commented on 18/07/2009 12:49 Report abuse

  Can you just copy the hard drive using LiveBoot linux onto a blank partition large enough to contain what you are copying? This would be a great way to have back-up 'clean slates' to install in your working computer and then install the essentials afterwards...if it works. I don't know

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  nollak commented on 25/04/2009 22:45 Report abuse

  thanks RuSeriouS! it took me ages to figure that out because of all the bs'ing in the advertising. Can you recommend some software that does mirror sets of file systems, where you can access the complet individual files on either computer.

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  RuSriouS commented on 20/02/2008 17:44 Report abuse

  These do not "mirror" drives they simply create Images of drives that you can use for restoration. the word mirror in computer language indicates that you have two hard drives that are identicle so that if one fails you can still operate your computer. this software does not allow you to do this

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  Shivkamal commented on 26/07/2007 22:47 Report abuse

  its gr8

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