Free software to transfer xp to external (firewire) hard drive???

hey kids,

Im doing some spring cleaning on my pc and im getting a new hard drive,
but i want to test the hard drive first to see if its better than my old one because their pretty much identical,
anyway,

Is there a way i can transfer Windows XP to my external firewire hard drive and then boot from the hard drive to see if it suits me, and it if does, just swap out the drives? I want to transfer just the system files so it would be like having a clean install, then transfer my other files over later.


Ive googled it but i can't pick a good one if my life depended on it,
i need something simple that can clone to a firewire hard drive.
Anything free (or a free trial) out there?????
Thanks,
Tanner.

Look here and see if anything might be worth a try:

Code:

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http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

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What attracted me to this page was a remark about Maxtor drives (I have alot of Maxtors). If you have at least one Maxtor drive you can use Maxtors' disk to transfer your data from one drive to the other. Maxtors' come with a maxblast disk thats really handy, if you have one try it.

acronis true image has a "clone" option and it sets all boot settings for you, too