HD Cloning/Imaging Software

[d4zza]

Hi, I'm looking for some cheap options for hard drive cloning and imaging in a business environment.

Recently I had a scare with a PC with specific software nearly going belly up with hard drive failure. My intention to create a disaster recovery system has now been accelerated to top priority.

I am looking for a cheap solution to carry out a few simple tasks. I intened on running the software on a dedicated desktop machine runnning windows 7.

I need to create a disaster recovery system for approx 15 PCs, a combination of desktops and laptops running Windows XP and having hard drives no larger than 250GB, but most of them are below 100GB.

My intention is to take the hard drives out of each PC individually, sit them into a USB hard drive docking station, and run software to create an image file of the hard drive in case it becomes faulty, then I can just write the image to a new hard drive. All the images will be stored on a large capacity external hard drive available to write to a new hard drive should I require to do so.

Secondly, I would like to do a similar operation to this except instead of writing to an image file, write directly to a new hard drive sitting in a second USB docking station.

I've been looking at various brands such as Acronis, Norton, Casper, etc, but there are too many options, particularly with Acronis. I only need to be able to do the two above mentioned, not the hundreds of other options available. I don't need cloud storage or to protect the system the software is installed to, or recover to dissimilar hardware, etc, etc., I only need to copy an HD to an image file, or copy an HD to another HD, and as cheaply as possible. In both cases, the HD will be docked via USB.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Rabbit]

I believe the free version of the forensics tool kit allows you to make and write images of drives. The only problem is I can't remember if it's shareware.

[d4zza]

@Rabbit
Thanks for the suggestion. If I'm looking at the right package, like others, it seems a bit complicated for what I'm wanting to do.

Casper is the closest I've come so far with being able to copy direct from one external HD to another external HD. If only it could also create an image file.

I'm not adverse to using more than one package though. Casper fulfills one need. Anyone have any suggestions on another package that will do the image file part?

thanks.