# Drive-cloning software recommendations?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drive-cloning-software-recommendations/366435
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 28, 2006, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drive-cloning-software-recommendations/366435 "2006-07-28T18:15:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drive-cloning-software-recommendations/366435/1 "2006-07-28T18:15:43Z")
I’m thinking of upgrading the hard drive on my laptop, and I’d rather just clone my current data rather than reinstall Windows and all the eight thousand applications I need. So - does anyone have any recommendations (freeware or shareware appreciated, because I don’t really want to shell out for Norton Ghost for a one-time upgrade) for what I could use to clone my hard drive? I have an external drive that’s sufficiently large, and a desktop from which to do the actual cloning process.
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### Author:  [@Carnac\_the\_Magnificent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnac_the_Magnificent)
#### Post date: [July 28, 2006, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/drive-cloning-software-recommendations/366435/2 "2006-07-28T18:21:30Z")
All reviews I’ve seen give higher marks to the Acronis product.
I recently downloaded the freeware DriveImage XML. Haven’t used it yet, but one doper said it worked great for him. Again, free.