My hard drive has been slowly failing over the last few weeks, causing my computer to randomly reboot at regular intervals. Today it started making clunking noises. Last month on the Lifehacker blog, a post pointed to a program called HDClone. There is a free edition that I downloaded, burned to a CD and booted my computer on. An hour later, it had copied from my frail old (at least 6 years old) hard drive onto a brand new drive I bought tonight. Windows booted flawlessly from the new hard drive. It was as though it never happened…except for the extra 100GB of hard drive space I have now.
I highly recomend this software if you’re in need of backing up or copying a hard drive (it’ll copy a drive to an image, drive to drive, image to…etc.). One thing I should point out though… If your hard drive dies completely and your computer won’t recognize it at all, this software probably isn’t going to do anything for you. It’s best to replace hard drives as soon as possible. If it starts making funny noises, it’s time to take action. I also recommend Lifehacker. It’s a great site about productivity, technology and useful short cuts and freebies in all areas of life.
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