Our second question of the day comes to us via email from Liu. Don't forget to visit the PCstats forums for help with your questions!

Q: I'm trying to make a duplicate copy of my current hard disk. my master hdd (1)is 40gb and it is dual boot, with 3 partitions: 98se/w2k/files storage. I have attached a 20GB hdd(2) as a slave on the same ide cable. It also has 3 partitions. for each of the corresponding partitions in hdd(2), the size is enough for the files in hdd(1). is it possible for me to make a duplicate copy of the hdd(1)? I understand the procedure after reading your guide. Before I try though, I would like to seek your opinion on my usage of different size hdd.

A: It really depends on the tool you are using. Norton Ghost is capable of creating a cloned partition equal to the size of the data, not the size of the drive itself, as are other commercial cloning products. The freeware utilities we covered in the article are not, and you will not be able to use the smaller 20G drive to copy all of your partitions.

If you intend to use the backup copy of your drive in the future, I'd advise you to perform the operation on a larger drive. If you are just trying to secure your data, there are several easier ways to go about it. You might want to consider an external USB 2.0 drive if backing up all your data and your operating systems is your primary concern.