Having no luck trying to create a disk image on this laptop. (haven't tried another machine yet). Don't know if it's the hardware, software, or the operator.
I've been testing by installing different Imaging programs and trying to create a disk image of the laptop HDD (there is only one) to a Toshiba USB 1T drive.
Todo was behaving erratic from the start splashing strange stuff on the screen and in the task bar. After about 15 minutes the main progress window showed no progress.... nothing seemed to be happening. When I tried to abort the write process the program didn't respond at all. Couldn't shut it down by any means except turn the machine off. (I did this twice with the same results).
Then I installed something called Data Numen.... it seemed to install and run ok, but damn slow. According to the progress indicator it would have taken almost 7 hours to create the image. The laptop has a Seagate 500G SSHD with 42G of used space. I didn't think this was normal so aborted that. (program responded normally).
Next I tired one called Disk Wizard (freeware). Pretty much the same as Todo..... no apparent action and totally locked up the system.
Lastly, I installed and ran Norton Ghost 15. After about half an hour it was still at 5%..... I went to bed. Woke up to all kinds of empty boxes on the screen.... machine all locked up and unresponsive. After restart I saw it had written about 20G to the external drive.
I'm open to suggestions.....