What is the easiest way to clone a hard drive?

Basically, you use a program that creates a CD which you boot the PC with. From there, you point it to the boot/source drive, and then point it to the new drive as the copy/destination. Even the free ones have no trouble doing it. Go to each site and read their own procedures- but it's generally pretty painless. As always- back up your own data before doing the clone.

Most popular drive sold is WD (Western Digital)- their cloning software is here.

Maxtor/Seagate do their own, too (Maxblast/Seatools). Whatever drive make you're cloning TO is the manufacturer software to use.

Otherwise, just use other free 3rd party ones like DriveImage XML, HD Clone, or Ranish (multi-platform).

HTH

For me the the easiest way to clone a hard drive is Acronis TrueImage "Home" and that works for me so great why should not for you.

What operating system are you using? And if it's an external or secondary hard drive what applications are you using on the drive that you want to copy (if it is a secondary hard drive)

Don't spend money or waste your time with 3rd party software you don't need! Windows 7 Ultimate can do that easily with it's Backup and Restore feature (wow, who knew?) Grab an external hard drive the same size or larger as the original hard drive you want to clone and a blank DVD to make a Windows repair disc to boot from (if you don't have a Windows 7 install disc handy) then see post #12 in this thread:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f217/solved-cloning-windows-7-drive-531764.html

I tried to clone a 40GB HD onto a 320GB with both Norton Ghost and Acronis. It said the cloning was successful but trying to boot from the cloned drive I kept getting "missing boot file error." Windows 7 Backup and Restore cloned the thing perfectly in less than an hour with no problems and I've done it successfully on at least a half dozen Windows 7 PCs.