Question about cloning a hard drive.

[Matt_Smi]

I am wondering if it is possible to do the following.

Ok I have a computer drive (Drive E lets day) that is setup the way I like it, I then slave this drive to a working machine with a spare hard drive (Drive F lets say) in it and copy the entire drive E to drive F.

I then stick drive F into a computer as the primary drive, will it boot up? I am asking this because I cannot figure out how to ghost image a machine on Vista and I need to apply my image to another machine. Let me know if this is possible or point me in the right direction, thanks.

[sgtspector]

Simply copying the files from one drive to another will not render the new drive bootable. There are numerous files that will not be copied over. Go to the web page of the new drives' manufacturer and download the cloning utility if you do not have it on a cd. The attach the drive to the ide or sata controller as a slave. Us the utility to clone the drive and then shut down and disconnect the old drive and configure the new drive as the first boot hard drive. That should do it. There will be additional steps to make that drive work in another pc though.

[Vaillant]

Matt_Smi : to do what you are describing, you will HAVE to use Microsoft's utility named Sysprep.

Even with Vista, you cannot simply pull an installation out of one machine and drop it into another without some prior preparation. Simply dropping it without further preparation MIGHT work, IF you're lucky... But don't count on it.

[kilgoretrout]

You'll probably have to reactivate vista as well. From what I've read, even minor hardware changes on vista boxes, eg. adding ram, have resulted in reactivation notices.