Need to do a Complete copy of Hard drive

[Truthisone]

My Primary hard drive's connectors are breaking. So, I need to copy everything to a second hard drive I have of the same size. It is external and brand new and I will be using eSata to do the copy.

What's the best method?

[Accessless]

Including the OS?

[Truthisone]

yes I need a backup of Vista too

[patio]

Acronis True Image is my preference...
However there are others such as Ghost, Macrium Reflect (Free) etc.
Also all hard drive manuf. supply a "cloning" tool for copying an old HDD to a brand spanking new one.
The procedure is fairly simple:
Hook up the new drive as a slave.
DLoad the new drive manuf. utilities from their website and follow the instructions for creating a bootable CD.
Boot to the CD and select the "Clone" option.
Select the source (old drive) and the target (new drive ) and let it run.
When finished power down.
Remove the old drive completely.
Hook up the new drive jumpered as master.
Power up and boom...you're done.
You can then format the old drive and use it for storage if you trust it with data...if not their fun to take apart.

[Truthisone]

The problem with the drives is that I cannot do the master slave thing. On one drive all the plastic is cracked in that area and I don't have a plastic jumper anyways. I have to do it externally, so how can I partition an external drive and clone the original partitions.

[patio]

This will not work as any Windows OS after WinME is not built to be bootable from an external drive...
This is by design.
Also i do not understand the jumper dilemna as any PC shop will give you a handful of jumpers usually for free...
I think there is more to this story than we have heard,

[Truthisone]

Reason I want to backup and replace my original Hard Drive is that I noticed that the plastic is damaged on it where you are supposed to put the jumper. I don't have any jumpers. Is there another way I could make my external drive a Slave  without a Jumper?

Can I atleast partition my external Hard drive?

[Truthisone]

I guess I can't partition an external hard drive easily.

[patio]

Partioning any drive whether internal or external is easy...however it has nothing to do with your plastic/melted jumper issue which i still do not understand.

[Truthisone]

My primary drive just bit the dust tonight. But for future reference, how do you do a master slave setup if you can't put a plastic jumper on a drive?

I tried to partition with a few free programs but they wanted to partiton my primary drive and not my external.

[patio]

I've never had a drive i couldn't connect a jumper to so i'm afraid i cannot advise in that department.
As far as the internal/external dilemna what are you using to partition ? ?