How-To Clone your Hard drive using Gparted

- You will also need to download and burn an ISO of Gparted Live bootable cd, available for 

download here; http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?

group_id=115843&package_id=173828

 Note: you may be able to just use the Ubuntu Live CD version of Gparted, but I have not tried

it.

- You have a Ubuntu live CD handy, as you will most likely need to reinstall grub at the

 procedures end.

Unless you have special needs or something is not detected right, you can pretty much keep

hitting enter thru the various choices of gpartrd, as settings such as keyboard , screen

resolution, etc are normally detected right. Soon you should arrive at the screen in which you

can view your current partitioning scheme on the disk you are planning to clone.

A drop down arrow in top right hand corner should toggle between the current disk /dev/hda

and your target disk /dev/hdb. Switch to /dev/hdb and ensure the size has been correctly

detected and delete any existing partitions on this disk (/dev/hdb!) if it is not a new disk.

 Now switch back to /dev/hda and copy first partition. Just click on selected partition and

choose copy. Switch over to /dev/hdb, and paste the first partition into the unallocated space.

At this point you may resize the new partition to whatever size you desire, either through

dragging the edge of the partition window, or by manually entering the size in the window

 beneath. Repeat this step as needed until all partitions are copied over, arranged and sized to

your liking. Don't forget to leave some room at the disks end for swap.

Click apply after the pasted preview of new partitions looks good, sit back and let copy

 process even error checks for file system errors and attempts to fix any if found, the ext3 file

system is pretty robust, and I don't know that Ive ever encountered and file system errors.

Once the file system check is completed the actual copying/cloning process will begin, This

make take some time depending on system resources available, and the sheer amount of data

 being copied.

If you click on the details arrow you can watch the new partitions being created, optimal

 blocksize determined, followed by the transfer of data, once the operation is complete Gparted

will begin a file integrity check of the new ext2/ ext 3 File system.

 Note; NTFS file systems will not be error checked, as I believe Gparted lacks the ability to

"see" inside the partition an merely copies the image whole. Next time windows is booted on

the new cloned drive, chkdisk will most likely start after boot in protest to such callous

treatment. I have used this method several times now and I have yet to see chkdisk find any

 bad sectors etc from this process

All right, Nothings Blown up so far? Good : ) There may be an error about being unable to

verify the contents of the NTFS partition, but we can safely ignore that. As long as all

operations completed, we should be good to go. The next step is to remove the cloned drive.

Make sure and set the jumper back to Master before reinstalling the new drive into the

machine, or BIOS will not auto-detect it.

 

Run Auto-detect and you should see the new drive, as Master. If the BIOS does not properly

detect the new size of the hard drive you may have to manually enter the information,

 Normally found on the top of the drive (if you have an older machine, you may consider 

 jotting this info down before installing the new drive to save yourself the trouble of pulling it

 back out to get this information, if you suspect theres is going to be an issue with auto-detect)

OK, the moment of truth is upon us.....We boot up and ..Nothing?? All you have now is a

 black screen with a blinking cursor? Fear not, You have your Ubuntu Live cd, right?

The problem here is the Computer cant find grub. To fix this we just need to reinstall grub.

For this section of the tutorial I'm going to borrow (aka cut 'n paste) from an outstanding grub

how-to by catlett. The thread in its entirety can be found here;

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351

Boot the Ubuntu live CD, once you reach the desktop, open a terminal

sudo grub

This will get you a "grub>" prompt (i.e. the grub shell). At grub>. enter these commands

find /boot/grub/stage1

This will return a location. If you have more than one, select the installation that you want to

 provide the grub files.

 Next, THIS IS IMPORTANT, whatever was returned for the find command use it in the next

line (you are still at grub>. when you enter the next 3 commands)

root (hd?,?)

Again use the value from the find command i.e. if find returned (hd0,1) then you would enter 

root (hd0,1)

 Next enter the command to install grub to the mbr:

setup (hd0)

Finally exit the grub shell:

quit

That is it. Grub will be installed to the mbr.

When you reboot, you will have the grub menu at startup, and should be able to boot into your 

new cloned drive! I have successfully used this method to clone drives various times, and

only had it fail once, with an I/O error. I kinda think that was from not putting the side of the

case back on which alters the airflow path across the CPU, and got it too hot.

I am still kind of a "gn00b" myself, and if anyone has any revisions or suggestions, I will be

happy to revise this.

Good Luck!