Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with clone

Copying a CF card written in a special format

exogenous — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:57:58 -0800

Cloning a CF card written in a proprietary format. Seeking suggestions for USB card reader, software, etc. I want to make one backup copy of a valuble compact flash card that is written in a proprietary format. I can access the CF card under Windows XP using proprietary software, but only using an (out-of-production) ImageMate SDDR 31 that has been modified with special firmware. This PDF has a few details but is probably not very helpful.

Needless to say the proprietary software isn't set up to let me make my backup. Under Windows Explorer the card doesn't appear to have any contents.

I don't know the capacity of the CF card off hand but it's not very large, 512 MB or less. I plan on finding this out and getting the a matching blank CF card.

I have Ubuntu installed and reckon that linux will probably be the way to go. I am semi-comfortable with the OS. I also have access to a newish Mac Mini.

I'm currently thinking about trying ddrescue possibly together with a second CF card reader. But I'm not sure if my modified CF card reader (1) is absolutely required to read and write the special CF card, or if (2) linux will like the modified CF card reader. I haven't done much experimentation, partly out of fear of trashing the expensive card and/or card reader.

I'd like any recommendations for well-supported CF card readers that might be able to ensure I can get the data off all the nooks and crannies of the CF card. I'd also appreciate advice on software for cloning the disc, etc.

To preempt our resident copyright police, the backup is legal under 17 USC 117.

Protecting a Laptop from the Internet

yellowbkpk — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:16:03 -0800

What's the best way to get a laptop ready for a sibling's trip to college? My younger sibling is getting ready to head off to college 600 miles away at the end of the month. We just ordered a standard 'ol Dell laptop and I'm looking for the best way to get it set up so that I don't have to worry too much about remotely fixing and diagnosing problems.

My plan so far:
1. Wipe Vista off
2. Partition the drive into 3 partitions: 2 equally-sized OS partitions, one larger data partition.
3. Install Win XP SP3 with all updates.
4. Install required productivity software, video, image, browsers, etc.
5. Somehow clone C:\ to the second partition so that it can be recovered in the event of a virus.

Any other ideas? What's the best way to protect the laptop from nasties that a teenager nowadays inevitably will accumulate while surfing the web without my intervention?

What's a good piece of software that can do step 5?

Is it possible to boot a cloned MacBook drive onto a Mac Mini and continue about my business?

prggr — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:10:30 -0800

Is it possible to boot a cloned MacBook drive onto a Mac Mini and continue about my business? Alright, so I flew across the country yesterday and I left my MacBook at the TSA checkpoint. After much freaking out, I managed to get it located and am getting it overnighted back to me. Right now I'm poking along with my last backup on a Windows machine trying to cobble together enough things to get some work done. It got me to thinking about other ways to deal with a lack of my primary machine.. As standard procedure, I use carbon copy cloner on my Macbook to a firewire drive about once a month. Nightly I rsync everything from my Users directory. I have booted off the drive on my Macbook before and verified things work fine that way (actually, booting off the Firewire drive is faster than the internal drive.. ). I was wondering, if I picked up an Intel Mac Mini just as a spare machine, would I be able to just boot off of that external drive even though it is a clone of the Macbook and just keep on trucking? Would the OSX from the Macbook boot on the Mini via the cloned drive or would I then need to reinstall OSX with the Mini's copy to do what I'm thinking?

Can a drive that is encrypted with software-based full disk encryption be cloned?

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:43:47 -0800

Can a drive that is encrypted with software-based full disk encryption be cloned? I have a laptop with a hard drive that is encrypted with software-based full disk encryption (Utimaco SafeGuard Easy), and I want to upgrade to a faster and larger drive. Can the entire drive be cloned without unencrypting the drive? Will I be able to clone to a larger drive? I am not able to remove/modify/reconfigure the encryption software, as it was installed by the IT overlords.

(For extra points, any suggestions for open-source/free cloning software?)

Mirroring the display on an iMac running windows

hydrophonic — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:52:09 -0800

For a new iMac running Windows XP, I need to mirror/clone the display so it shows the same on the monitor and a projector. The graphics driver (for an ATI Mobiity Radeon HD 2600XT) doesn't support mirroring, but the iMac does it automatically. But the monitor and the projector have very different aspect ratios, and the same screen size gets applied to both. Is there a way to set two different screen sizes? There's nothing under the display preferences. Any third party software that would work?

Cloning Vista SP1 OEM? Questions inside...

colecovizion — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:02:24 -0800

Cloning Vista SP1 OEM? Questions inside... I just bought a bunch (30) of computers from Dell. They all came with OEM licenses of Vista/Office 2007/Acrobat 8.1. Everything is activated. As you can imagine, I have quite a CD collection now!

I would like to make a single bootable, pre-configured image (on a USB drive or DVDR) that I can use on these computers just in case I have to reformat them. My ideal configuration would have Vista SP1, Office 2007, and Acrobat 8.1 already installed on the image with any specific configurations and updates. Is this legally possible (the fine print has always confused me)?

If so, my follow-up questions:

1. What software would you recommend to make the image? I'm leaning towards vLite + Acronis TrueImage Home.
2. Between the 30 computers, there are 3 different hardware sets. Would it be best to make an image for each hardware config?
3. How would you go about making such an image so that there aren't any activation issues? I'm perusing this thead for any potential "gotchas." I'm assuming that I would make an image that isn't activated or has any serial numbers in place. The Vista key appears to be modified with ease (Control Panel/System), but maybe there are some repercussions I don't know about. I think I can install Office 2007 and Acrobat 8.1 without entering serials.
4. DVDR or USB? I'm assuming DVDR is faster.

Some notes:

1. I don't need any fancy network deployment software. I would only be doing this when needed
2. I don't need to automate anything unique to the machine such as serial numbers/computer names/passwords. Just eliminating the installation time is good enough for me.

Thanks for any assistance!

Clone hard drive for future use

billtron — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:47:40 -0800

My XP Home running laptop hard drive has started making clicking and grinding sounds. Previous questions cover cloning the hard drive. This is more desirable than reinstalling everything or just backing up My Documents and Settings. Is it possible to create a clone or an image or something that is stored on my home server indefinitely, so that once my hard drive does die I can use it to recreate the current settings on a new drive?

Cloning

chairish — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:11:05 -0800

I have a "perfect" MS Vista setup that I need to clone or deploy to another 20 computers. The hardware is identical and it all needs to be done in a hurry. In the old days I would have copied hard drives by hooking up the next drive to the second IDE controller. Then I would have used my trusty copy of Norton Ghost to copy from one disk to the other.

Ideally I would like to create some sort of bootable image that I can run off a USB hard disk and just tweak at the end. We have volume licencing on MS Vista and on Office 2007 and the other specialist software that I need to install.

My questions are: what is the best way (- and step by step instructions please)? And what is the cheapest way (-licenses etc)? Bonus points if I can deploy to the older machines in the company that have different hardware components.

MBP: I cloned my old HD to a new (larger) one, and OS X only sees the older (smaller) space.

dhammala — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:29:43 -0800

The disk in my MBP was upgraded from 100GB to 250GB. They used a hardware disk to disk copier that just cloned the drive, bit for bit. Now, I want to grow my 100GB partition to fill up the new space, however Disk Utility only sees the drive as 100GB. I know there are some $100 utilities out there, but I am a geek and want to do it for free. We have tried to boot into Linux, use tools like gParted (which see the full drive, but only let us create a 128MB partition), rEFIt (to sync the partition maps), etc. but to no avail.

How do I reset the partition map so that it sees the full drive?

Clone?

weaponsgradecarp — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 19:47:03 -0800

My google-fu only goes so far: I'm looking for succinct summaries, explanations, and justifications of various religions' opinions/support/criticism on human cloning... Reproductive cloning is my main focus, but therapeutic cloning opnions are also cool...

I've found a few things, such as the adamant opposition by the Roman Catholic Church, and a couple of really cool explanations by various theologians, but I'm looking for any sort of cool differences between subsets of various religions...

Thanks much.

The mac with two brains

sandra_s — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 08:58:19 -0800

Can I back up / clone my Mac HD to an external HD then swap the Main and external drives? Powermac G4 running OS X 10.3.9.

In a move about 2 years ago I lost most of the disks for this machine, including not only some of my programs, but also my System OS disks.

This computer runs like a champ and I pretty much have all the files I need backed up to DVDs.

The main HD of this machine is starting to get a little whiney and making noise. So we all know that this HD cant be long for this world. Normally, as Ive done before, I'd back up my files, replace the drive, reinstall the OS and the programs, no big whoop.

But since i dont have my System OS disks and a few of my program disks, thats not an option.

I do have a newish external HD that is basically empty (and I dont care about the files on it), and is bigger than the Mac's main HD.

What I'd like to do is make an absolute copy of my main HD on the external HD, then physically swap the two drives (take the external drive out of its enclosure and put it into the Mac), theoretically having a new HD in the machine with all of the same OS, programs... blah blah blah, right back where they were.

Is this a pipe dream, or is it actually feasible? If it's possible, how does one go about it?

Thanks, all!

AnswersAnswers

Zinger — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:09:18 -0800

Yahoo Answers/Quomon.com software clone recommendations? I'm looking for some software that duplicates the question and answer functionality at Yahoo Answers or Quomon.com (or even what happens here at Mefi. Open source would be nice. I've seen Askeet, but it's unclear (to me at least) as to how recently that's been updated and/or whether it's still being maintained.

how to clone failing disk in RAID 0 array

nnovik — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:44:22 -0800

One of the disks in my hardware RAID 0 system drive array is failing, but it's still booting for the moment. Is there any tool I can use to clone just the failing physical disk to another identical one? Typical drive image software will not work for this because Windows sees the two disks in the RAID 0 array as a single volume.

What I need to do is basically mirror the failing disk exactly onto the replacement. I just can't find a tool that will do this -- all my searching keeps turning up drive image tools that run under windows and will happily clone the *entire* drive, but not just the one failing disk.

Because it is a large drive (each one is 500 MB -- I know, I know; I was going to move to RAID 5 shortly, and just hadn't had the time :/) I would like to avoid having to go out and get a 1TB drive to clone the entire disk, not just for expense but because I am afraid that the amount of time it will take to clone everything will increase the chances the disk will die for good somewhere in there.

Any suggestions?

How to clone a harddrive?

Mave_80 — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:25:20 -0800

I want to install a bigger hard drive to my laptop. How do I clone the current hard drive to the new one so I don't have to reinstall windows on the new disk? I have an external USB enclosure that I can put the new HDD in. I have the new HDD. I'm assuming I can use Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to do so. Thing is, I'm not sure if there's an obvious option to use. Recommendations on software and the process to do so? I'll probably only use the software a couple of times and am not interested in bits and pieces of the disk. I just want a simple one shot deal that will copy the entire disk (including OS) without major hassle. Providing it costs under $50 not too worried about price, although free is obviously better.

Side notes: I will obviously back up all important data on the laptop first. Also, my laptop does not have a built in CD drive, only an external USB one. (I do have 2 USB ports available though). Finally, I've read these previous AskMe threads:
1. How to install old OS on a new laptop harddrive This thread is from a year and half ago - are Ghost and True Image still my best options?
2. Disk imaging utility Ghost wasn't mentioned - True Image was. Should I take a hint?
3. Ghost has given up the ghost.

Thanks for all your help!

Cloning DVDs on a Mac

wolfsleepy — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:11:07 -0800

I'd like to know how to clone DVDs on a Mac. This began when I was asked to copy a homemade DVD movie for a family member.

I can use handbrake to rip the movie, but there doesn't seem to be a way to simply clone it so that it can still be used in a regular DVD player (a friend suggested ripping it to .mov and using iDVD to make a new movie, but is there a simpler way?)

I'd like to be able to take an image of the DVD, and burn it directly onto another. I have a feeling that this is a 'forest for the trees' situation where I can't see an obvious solution, but that's where you come in.

(previous AskMeFi posts suggested some windows programs, but I didn't see anything for OSX)

How to maintain multiple identical laptops?

milquetoast — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:16:51 -0800

We need multiple laptops to have identical computing environments, with the ability to have them updated en masse. What is the best way? For a friend, conference services filter: My department has a dozen laptops. (PC, XP, mostly ThinkPads.) We provide them to clients on an event-by-event basis, usually for a few hours at a a clip. Each laptop has roughly the same specs, and is loaded with roughly the same stuff (MSOffice, DVD playback, VPN client, etc.). One problem: we inherited these laptops from another department and there's an awful lot of junk on them -- old files, half-uninstalled installs, obsolete user accounts, and so forth.

What we would love to be able to do is this:

1. Standardize the software environment across all laptops, making them identical (as much as possible).
2. Give the client the ability to load files on the hard drive temporarily, having them erased after each event.
3. Plug the returning laptop into a server (or something) that will check and reset its settings and apply any software/ driver updates.

What is the best, fastest, easiest way to do this? I'm particularly keen on #3, since I have a feeling we'll be migrating to different software packages fairly soon.

Thanks in advance!

Do I have a Ghost of a chance?

bartleby — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 16:28:34 -0800

4 Bigshot users. Highly customized profiles. All getting new (different) hardware. How do I get the new machines "the way I had it before" for them without spending a week re-doing all the software customizing that they can't tell me how they did in the first place? Okay, so I COULD just say Hey, I'm just responsible for installing the corporate programs - all that settings stuff inside them is your problem. But I need to level up from that kind of service, if at all possible. Also, they will MAKE it my problem, and I'll spend the next couple of weeks reinventing the wheel for them.

So I've got two users who are moving from Thinkpad R40s to R60s.
One moving from a box running XP, but built back in 2001, to a brand new HP desktop.
One is actually so beholden to her customizations, etc. that this is the step we're taking to pry her Windows 2000 machine out of her fingers and upgrade her to XP, also on a brand HP tower.

All these 4 new machines have their own XP OEMs.

So I know that if I had a batch of identical hardware and multi-user licences, I could set up one system correctly and just clone them using Norton Ghost or something (I'm unfamiliar with PC cloning & software - I've cloned a few OSX boxes using CarbonCopy, though). But I'm facing 4 installs each with different configurations, all moving to different hardware.

What's my best chance of copying as many user settings as possible from one set of hardware to another?
Would backing the drives up via "Ghost or something" and then "restoring" to the new machines do it?

There's got to be a way to do this that won't kill me. Please hope.

Who's real, who's the copycat?

papakwanz — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 14:04:25 -0800

"No, I'm your husband." "No, shoot him! He's the imposter!" Where'd this come from? There's a guy and some sort of doppelganger fighting. Someone, the guy's wife, daughter, friend, partner, whatever, has to figure out which is which and take out the evil copycat.

I've seen this scene parodied a few times in cartoons, namely Family Guy and South Park.

The terrible Michael Bay film The Island played it straight and had a scene where [spoiler] Ewan McGregor the clone & his "sponsor" did this exact schtick, ending with the "real" one getting shot instead of the (good guy) clone. [/spoiler] I was surprised the film played this scene seriously, considering that its been parodied more than a few times.

My question is: where did this first appear? I'm assuming it was some sort of sci-fi movie or TV show that featured clones, or other-dimensional doppelgangers, or evil robots that look just like people, whatever. Anyone know what film/show was the first to do a clone vs. original climax scene?

Exactly cloning a MacBook Pro's HD

lorimer — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:52:37 -0800

I need to make an exact clone of a MacBook Pro drive onto an external (fw) drive, which will then be used as the MBP's internal drive. [Asking for a friend, thanks!]
So Carbon Copy Cloner has been highly recommended in other posts here. CCC's main page says it's not Intel compatible (runs under Rosetta) and they include a warning about using PPC-created drives with Intel systems -- but as far as I understand, it would still be safe for my process. If people here can confirm that CCC is the right solution, I'll just go with that.

The current internal drive (factory supplied) is 80GB. The replacement I got is a 160GB, 5400rpm Toshiba (the biggest capacity I could get on newegg).

Currently I've got the 160GB drive in a firewire enclosure. The only thing I've done with it is use Disk Utility to format it & verify it (using my current MBP). When I'm done with this cloning process I'll just switch them physically, so I have a 160GB internal and an 80GB external drive.

Yes, I want to clone my existing drive (rather than do a fresh OS install on the new one and have to redo all the extra stuff I've done). Thanks!

or maybe that one with the fox, goose, and grain.

bartleby — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:36:17 -0800

Please help me with a Hard Drive "Tower of Hanoi" puzzle. I have to move some stuff around on drives & partitions, and I may be confusing myself & making it seem more complicated.
Somebody set me straight or give me a best practice, please. Super-smarties can skip the details and go straight to the ">>>" part below, answer it in one step, and show off. :P

I have a LaCie 160 GB external HD split into two equal-sized ~80GB partitions.
There is a bootable OSX 10.3 clone (used CarbonCopyCloner) of an old system taking up one half (pre-Tiger-transition backup, allows me to rarely run some old OS9 stuff). The other half is overflow file storage - photo albums, document scans,torrented video files, etc. that take up only about a quarter of the space.

I have it connected to an 80GB OSX 10.4 PPC Mini (via the Mini's single FireWire 400 jack) that's my current un-backed-up system.
I would like to repartition the 160 GB external drive as a single partition, bootable clone of my Mini to back up to, incorporating the overflow files as well, with some free space left for more. I love the idea, and have used it to save myself before when HDs have gone bad, of backing up to a bootable clone. HD goes bad? Switch your startup disk to the clone and you're back up with no other transition worries. Problem is, I can't transfer that clone file by file from one HD to another - it has to go as one big piece, no?

But I'd also like to keep a copy of the 10.3 clone around as well, because.... that's the kind of person I am. I'll just buy, say, a SmartDisk 80 GB FW400 external drive and keep it in a drawer unless/until I need it. I don't need to buy a FireWire hub just for this project (or do I?), or to keep the several external drives connected at all times.

Question is, how do I copy the 10.3 Panther clone from one external drive to another - especially since my Mini only has one FireWire 400 port?

Let's say that I can just back up the overflow files on the LaCie to DVD until the larger moves are done and get one 80GB blank partition on the Lacie HD.

>>>Which gives me a starting position of:

1)LaCie
80GB Panther clone
80GB Free (blank)

2)Mini
80GB Tiger system

3)SmartDisk
80GB Free (blank)

HELP ME PLEASE get to my desired end point of:

1)LaCie
160GB Tiger Clone (+overflow files+free space for more)

2)Mini
80 GB Tiger System

3)SmartDisk
80 GB Panther clone<<<

The Lacie is a triple-interface model, so could I connect the Lacie to the Mini via USB, and then connect the SmartDisk to the Lacie via FireWire, and then instruct it (how?) to move the Panther clone from one drive to another?

Or am I going to have to move my Tiger OS from the Mini to the open partition on the LaCie, then move the Panther clone to the Mini, in order to move it again to the SmartDisk? Then clear the Panther off the Mini, put Tiger back on, repartition the LaCie, and proceed from there?

I'm sure I'm missing an/the easy step here.
Please hope me.

In Windows XP: Migrating from the general Administrator Account to a Personal User Account...how?

MaverickX — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:59:26 -0800

In Windows XP: Migrating from the general Administrator Account to a Personal User Account...how? So I was lazy when I first started using my IBM Thinkpad with Windows XP Professional and I just used the default "Administrator" user account for all my computer needs (please don't hate me sys admins). This apathy continued for about a year, but now I want to do something about it.

I created a personal user account, but when I log in I

Don't have access to my 14GB My Music folder that I was using
All my customized shortcuts/icons are gone
Firefox settings, Thunderbird, etc are all gone.

So is there a quick way to "clone" the administrator account into a personal account appropriate for everyday use? I really don't want to go back and set everything up the way I like it.
(side note: another reason why I want to switch to a personal account is b/c my Thinkpad makes me manually activate the Wireless Radio EVERY time I turn the computer on, which is really annoying)

Marzetti Original Slaw Dressing

bright77blue — Sun, 14 May 2006 18:59:46 -0800

I live in Canada and cannot buy Marzetti Original Slaw Dressing. I have tried twice, but cannot get the egg taste. Even with 3 eggs, sugar and oil in a double boiler, I cannot get the taste right. Can anyone help?

What is the name of this plant?

BuddhaInABucket — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:20:59 -0800

Please identify a plant for me given this description: I first saw it in Hawaii (I have no idea if it's native there), and it's currently on exhibit at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, but it is completely impossible to find anything on their hideously designed website.

The plant reproduces in a very unique way- the periphery of the leaves of the plant develop (I think) clone offshoots that, when the leaf falls off the plant and to the ground, take root and start a new plant. The leaves and stalk are fleshy and the plant definitely grows quickly.

If you managed to find it via a google search, please let me know what words you used so that I can help improve my own google-fu.

Cloning a recalcitrant hard disk

kindall — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:22:40 -0800

How do I best clone a hard disk with bad sectors, when the PC spontaneously reboots upon hitting said bad sectors? I've had a few bad sectors on my hard disk on my PC at work for the last year or so. Oddly, the machine reboots whenever it tries to read one of them. Fortunately they were not in any vital files -- mainly I just had to turn off the nightly virus scan and remember not to try to optimize the disk or do a scandisk. Fortunately NTFS is pretty robust as file systems go! Our last IT guy didn't seem to think it was worth replacing the disk over. Now that he's left, our IT guy at headquarters (on the east coast) sent me a new hard disk (yay!) but that pesky rebooting thing is getting in the way of properly cloning it, and since he's on the east coast and I'm not, he can provide only limited hands-on support. I downloaded the 15-day trial of Acronis True Image (it's nice that it's not crippled), but even it suffers from the reboot and can't get through the clone. I haven't tried any other programs -- maybe one of those would work better? Or am I in for a big re-install of everything, which is what my IT guy recommends? My documents are all backed up safely, but it's probably going to take me a full day for a re-install of XP and all my apps, and I'd rather avoid that pain if I can.

Firefox settings

foxy_hedgehog — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 09:55:41 -0800

When I open a new window in Firefox, it opens to my home page. In Explorer, new windows opened to the same URL as the existing open window, which I much prefer. How can I change my settings so that Firefox will do the same and I'm not forced to trudge back to Explorer?