Free ghosting program?

My harddrive back home, according to my family, is dying. It's making clicking sounds, etc. I'll chkdsk /r it when I get back, but that probably won't help it forever.

Can anyone recommend a ghosting program that's more or less free? I'd steal the Norton one, but I can't BT behind my college's firewall.

dd

Part of a standard GNU operating system, use your favourite LiveCD. In its simplest form the syntax looks like this:
# dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdbWhere hda and hdb are the hard drives you're copying from and to, respectively.

Any solutions for the Windows user?

Or, if you like that way, what LiveCD to use? I've never used Linux (though if the new HD is bigger than the old one I'm trying a distro on a new partition) so I'd need a suggestion as to how to go about this. Sorry about being so newb about this.

Do any of the flashdrive solutions look good?

Well Knoppix is your classic LiveCD and a good one to try first. Pretty much anything will come with dd though, it's a very standard tool. If you'd prefer to do it in Windows, you can get the GNU coreutils package here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm this includes dd.

Thanks, muchly.

There's "Ghost 4 Unix", http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/, which works for PeeCees.. The code author is a dick, though. (I'm not surprised he's recently made it pan-handle-ware, claiming his open-source software will "die".... somehow.)

>>6
He means that he won't personally be able to continue development if you don't donate.

>>7
Bah. Why is it only now that he needs money to write code for it, after several years of not needing to? gu4 was only a small 'rainy sunday afternoon' project that most of us coders do all the time anyway (there's maybe 10kB of original code in there). The guy -literally- put 10 times more time and effort into bashing the kid who made a Linux/GPL port. "Giz me monies 2 buy Xbox plz."