Say you're upgrading to a new hard disk. How do you make an identical copy of your hard drive? You can't just drag and drop files in Windows to the new drive, alas. You have to make a bit-for-bit copy of your drive, including all the hidden files, files in use, and other junk that doesn't show up in Windows Explorer.

Power users have long relied on Symantec's Norton Ghost to make bit-for-bit copies, or clones, of their hard drives. But at $70 a copy, that can be a little pricey for something many people may use only once. (In fairness to Ghost, the software does include lots of additional features that make it suitable for general backup use too.)

You know what I'm going to say next: How about a free alternative? Enter Clonezilla, an open source cloning application that works well and... hey, did I mention it's free?

As with Ghost, Clonezilla isn't exactly for computer novices. You burn the program to a bootable CD, and DOS-like prompts guide you through the cloning process. The amount of information displayed can be daunting, but most of it can be ignored. To copy a disk, just select the disk-to-disk option at the menu, and let it do its thing.

I gave it a shot using two 250GB drives (with the source drive having about 100GB of data on it), and the job was done in about 20 minutes. When finished, I had a perfect copy of my original hard drive that I could have subbed in for the original. In my case, I just saved it as a handy "just in case" backup. Clonezilla works with SATA or IDE drives and even supports USB drives. Give it a spin next time you have a big drive copying job to do.

LINK: Clonezilla