All other questions become 'mute' if you don't have at least ONE Maxtor HD in your system.

MaxBlast is offered FREE from Maxtor, just like SeaTools is offered FREE from Seagate.  In both cases you must have one of their drives installed before the program will work to back up the drive.

Other programs like Ghost or Acronis True Image (Retail) don't care what the name is on the drive, , , they work equally well on all brands.

So the question remains....."If you're going to use MaxBlast, Do you have a Maxtor HD in your PC somewhere?"

I know I'll get binged for this but, "WD is the last drive on earth that I'd ever spend my hard earned money on."
As a PC tech, I've just had and seen too many problems with them.
Either Maxtor or Seagate are much more reliable.

Good Luck,
The Shadow 

Ron,
Maxblast, after being fully installed on yur HD, will offer to make you a boot CD.  Go for it!  Then to save space on your HD, you can delete Maxblast from the HD.

Try cloning C: to your second HD.  If it works OK, then the receiving drive will be able to boot your system.  But in NO case will C: be damaged, since it's only being read.

I've used the Maxblast boot CD to Clone my Vista HD repeatedly with NO problems so far.

I even cloned to an external USB drive....and on my PC the external drive was able to boot my system.  You must have a really versatile MOBO to do that. 

Good Luck,
The Shadow 

I tried with MazBlast 5 to create a bootable clone HD as I mentioned earlier. My purpose was to be able to replace my old C: HD if needs be. I wanted to keep this backup drive updated so I will never have to use Recovery from scratch again.

I came up with problems I did not understand when I started MaxBlast. This is what I was asked...

1. I selected from the left window, "Create Bootable Media.
2. [next window] I was asked if I wanted "Safe Version" or "Full Version" ...not knowing what I was doing I selected Full Version.
3. [next window] I was given another selection...
      -CD-RW Drive (F:)
      -ISO Image
      -Removeable Drive (A:)
And thats where I stopped.
I didn't find any selections pertaining to the new WDigital D: I wish to clone. Unless, when you clone a drive its is automatically bootable during the process. I have no idea or experience. Maybe MaxBlast can't do this.

The drive I want to Clone is C: to new drive F: to be bootable.
Mypurpose is then when complete, I want to test it. So I will removed the old current C: boot windows XP drive and put the new cloned drive and have windows boot from this newly created clone.

Well, I could use some help. This is the best I can do.
I'd appreciate some perhaps, setp-by-step guidance.
Anyone's help will be highly appreciated...
ron

Thanks
I appreciate your reply.
WDigital drive was partitioned, it seemed, out of the box. Only took a couple of seconds.

I made a bootable CD. Then I put into windows MaxBlast.

I suppose I will not be able to use MaxBlast to make a fully ready C: windows XP boot drive. Then I must purchase something without limitations. What software would be the easiest to understand for a beginner? I assume the recommended one's would be Acronis or Norton's. Which would be best purchase in my case?

I the beginning, I thought MaxBlast 5 had to capability to make a fully functional C: backup. Where I would just remove the old C: drive, and insert the newly made drive into the C: slot and boot. Not having to do anything additional after completion of clone.
thanks for your help,
with appreciation....

Thanks Brian

I will do this. I made a bootable CD as requested.
I'll just do the clone and see what happens.
I thought I misunderstood what I had read from others comments here.  Ok...will do.

Thanks Brian
I did the clone successfully.
I came up with things I didn't expect or understand, but the process was completed successfully. Tomarrow I will pull out the old C: drive to test the new one.
When I read MaxBlast instructionst, nowhere could I find it telling me that the clone would be made bootable during the process. I read it when  the process finished.
I appreciate you and Shadow's suggestions. As a matter of fact, you pushed me along. That was good!

I do have additional questions regarding the process that I didn't understand what was meant during the CD boot.
with appreciation...

Hi Brian
Thanks...all worked perfectly.
It is an internal WDigital HD
Not knowing much about computer and HD, I seem to like the WDC over the Maxtor. It is very quiet and smooth to me. While the Maxtor is clicking away.

I do have a question regarding the MaxBlast CD bootable media I created.
When I restart from the CD, there were 2 options in the middle of the screen. The top option [don't remember the label] and the other option was to go back to windows to do clone setup. That didn't make sense to me, since I learned from this forum that the DOS method was the most reliable. At the time I didn't understand. So I clicked on the top option and got a black screen. Nothing loaded, the computer hungup. I still don't have any idea what that option is for - that is my question(?).

Well, I restarted  theh CD and went to Windows MaxBlast and followed the step-by-step proceedure. Then was asked to restart. The thing is I left the CD still in the drive and I ended up starting all over. So I booted again - the Widows XP blue screen came up showing the DOS MaxBlast proceeding with the clone.
So I suppose the question has been about the other option [the top option] in the MaxBlast bootable media [where I got the black screen and what that option is for(?).

Of course I have a few more 'general' questions, here and there. I hope you don't mind. Unfortunately, I hardly understand what I read. Those that write manuals assume a lot.
I appreciate all the help that was offerred to me...
thanks again...