I'm switching out my secondary Hard Drive, a 320GB SATA for a 1TB SATA, and would like to do an exact drivecopy. I'm only going to actually use the program once so I don't intend to make a purchase this time. Although I realize copy/paste would work on a secondary HDD, some files tend not to copy over, or reveal themselves to be inexplicably corrupt months later the second some historical document is needed. Anyone know of one, or a few, freeware drivecopy programs that can do the task reliably?
If it isnt a primary drive (OS installed onto it) then you should just be able to plug the new drive in, copy all data from the original and paste it to the new one. Then unplug the old drive. Thats how I have always done it when adding a new drive to replace a dieing one and have never had any issues. It should work for you
You can always try something like "xcopy" which is a bit more reliable then windows file copy when it hits a file in use and you can set file checking on it. Its not an imaging software but I find it way more reliable then windows copy when moving large quantities for files around. Assuming you go with Enigma's suggestion as just running it as a slave drive then disconnecting it.
I do understand your problem. I have seen issues in the past with xp and vista moving very large batches of many small to medium sized files (documents to tv episode sized files) this seemed particularly true of video files. I would get occassional curruptions. This was especially true of usb external drives. Not sure if its luck or genuine improvement or lack of trials but I have not had any issue with windows 7. Weird. As for a solution, I've never been bothered to find one. But id be fascinated to find some type of file mover that has a checksum verifer or something like that. I wonder if that exists?...