Comments on: HDClone Hard Drive Copier Review

By: Wyre

Wyre — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:34:27 +0000

After attempting several clone programs:
Norton Ghost 9.0
Norton Ghost 2003
Norton Ghost 12.0
Acronis
Casper
& Numerous other cloning softwares (Owning a computer company I have used nearly all of them). I came across HDClone a few years ago. The free version does nearly everything that I need it to do, but, after using it for nearly a month (and paying nothing for the software) I purchased the Professional version. WOW! What a difference… Well worth the money and I would HIGHLY recommend this software to anyone that plans on cloning drives.

Norton has a lot of extra features (none of which I actually use) and this software was far less expensive and does a better job.

Good luck to all!

~Justin AKA. WyreTheWolf

By: What you read here in 2008

What you read here in 2008 — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:54:20 +0000

[...] HDClone Review [...]

By: flummoxed

flummoxed — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:33:00 +0000

Well, when your disks are really hurting that
bad, a run with SpinRite may be the only
Savior; it is certainly not OS dependent.

By: Conor O'Neill

Conor O'Neill — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 09:17:06 +0000

Good point re repair. I lost 6 months of email a few years back because I couldn’t find decent tools that could fix/recover corrupted Linux software RIAD volumes.

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:17:55 +0000

Well Conor it didn’t work.Would you believe over 2700 Read & Write errors?I had run CHKDSK through DOS 2 times but what I didn’t know was that’s all it did,no repairs.Then I ran it w/windows and tried to clone again,no luck.Then after numerous reboots CHKDSK finally ran correctly identifying and fixing,it took it a long time to finish.I then used Acronis to clone my drive.It then worked without a glitch.Quite fast too.Anyway I’m surprized that w/all I’ve read on the net about cloning, not many mentions about doing disk repair.Initially I had only ran scandisk and defragged because that’s what was recommended.I wish someone would have mentioned CHKDSK.Although I should have known what with all the read errors.Using Arconis, O Errors! $30 0n EBay.Regards, Robert.

By: Conor O'Neill

Conor O'Neill — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:51:31 +0000

I have a year old laptop that is suddenly given chkdsk errors on boot-up. I have a feeling I’ll be using HDClone very soon again.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:07:36 +0000

Conor I sure appreciate your post.I have an old (6+years}P4 desktop that started making clicking sounds and simultaneously freezing up necessitating reboots.I checked on the net and came to the conclusion that my old HD was about to fail.I did my research about cloning and software and ended up buying not one but two different programs 1 w/hardware (Apricorn’s DriveWire) the other being Acronis.Both failed to clone my drive as they would stop at Read Errors.I came across your post and downloaded the free version of HDClone.It’s copying as I write this reply.It,so far,indicates 5 read and write errors but am hopeful in the end that the cloned drive will work.I will let you know.This has been a frustrating experience.Regards,Robert.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:20:13 +0000

No problem. Thanks for making me aware of this product. It actually works like it is supposed to. Imagine that.

I will post any future updates on this cloned O.S. here.

By: conor

conor — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 09:52:58 +0000

I was amazed by it too. I was happy to buy it and I’ve had free upgrades since. It’s one of those tools you don’t use very often, but when you need it, you really need it!

Thanks for posting the comment too. This post is in my top five most visited since I wrote it but this is the first comment anyone has written!

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 02:50:45 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I tried *all* the other imaging backup apps and none would get the new drive to boot with a cloned/imaged O.S.

This HDclone did the trick. I ended up with 8 read errors. And at the end it said “erroneous clone”, but everything seems to work great, even after scadisk, several benchmarks, etc. It took a little over 4 hours to clone an 80 gig drive to a 320 gig drive. HDclone only showed the exact amount of gigs as the previous drive, so I had to use Partition Magic to find the rest of the drive space and either merge it to the C: drive or create a new partition(which is very easy and fast).

Not bad for a free app. I definitely plan to buy the faster version. I’m amazed it blew away all the other Image backup software I tried. It was also amazingly more simple than those apps.

By: conor

conor — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:52:45 +0000

Ten months later and the machine has run flawlessly every day. A great result for me.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 20:20:34 +0000

How did that clone work out? I have 8 read errors and three hours left on the cloning. I would be interested to know if you eventually ran into any problems.

Thanks.

-Mike