Re: second HD with drive image

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"Jud McCranie" wrote
On Wed, 16 May 2007 21:57:51 -0700,

"Rock" wrote:

A clone, on the other hand, is an exact duplicate of the drive. If
everything is done right, yes a clone can be substituted for the original as
if it were the original.

What software will clone a drive?

Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, CasperXP, BootItNG, and others. CasperXP can close on a partition as weall as a drive basis. The others clone only on a drive basis. They also do drive/partition imaging, except for CasperXP. CasperXP can clone on a partition basis. I know ATI and I believe Ghost, only clone on a drive basis.

ATI does file backups as well and restores can be done on a file, partition or drive basis.

What is it you are trying to accomplish?

Last year I had a HD die. I had a "full backup" on an external HD,
and I thought I was safe. I got a replacement drive, formatted it,
got it booted, and then started to restore the "full backup". Turns
out that I couldn't put the computer back like it was with the "full
backup" - you can't copy the Windows registry file. So all of that
was worthless. I did get back the data but nothing else. Everything
had to be installed again. Some were from CDs, some were downloads.
Many of the things for which I had the original CD, I had downloaded
updates. I spent about four weeks trying to get dozens of things
reinstalled. I still haven't gotten everything done.

What I want is that if the HD crashes, all I have to do is switch the
drive over and be back in business, with everything just as it had
been (except for the second HD). I'm an in dependant software
developer, so when my computer is down, I'm out of work.

Ok, I suggest drive imaging, not cloning. I use Acronis True Image Home, version 10. One approach is to full image the system once a week to an external hard drive, then a nightly incremental image (which is just what has been changed since the last incremental image). To restore to a bare drive, for example if the hard driver crashes, install the drive, boot from the ATI CD with the external hard drive connected and do the restore.

Alternate between two different external drives. Keep one off site, the other is used that week. Then switch. How many weeks worth of full and incremental images will fit on the drive obviously depends on how much is to be imaged, and how big is the external drive.

How often would you be cloning? Once a week? Once a month? Say you clone once a week and the drive dies on the 6th day. You've lost 6 days worth of work. Imaging can be done quickly on a daily basis with an incremental image. Cloning takes much longer.

For example on one system the total size of the compressed image file is about 62GB. It takes just under 2 hours to create the image and 1 3/4 hours to verify it. The daily incremental images can vary from 1/2GB to 5GB. They take on the order of 10 minutes to create. Verification involves all the incremental images back to and including the last full image it's based on so it takes about the same time, 2 hours. One option is to not verify the the incremental images if you verified the full image on which it's based. Of course you would have to have confidence in the reliability of the imaging process. Working with it for some time will give you that.

A restore of the full image takes about an hour. You need to test the restore under real conditions to have confidence in it.

Using two external drives and alternating them will archive backups going back a month or two on a daily basis. You can also save images at different stages of your system setup. Image right after a clean install before apps are installed, after all base apps are installed, etc, - organize this as you want. I think this is much more practical than cloning once a week or month.

Another approach that can be used is dependent on whether the computer case has a spare 5 1/4" drive bay. If so fit it with a removable drive rack. You can get an individual drive tray that fits in the rack. Mount multiple drives in different trays; it's easy to swap out. You could set it up to image to one drive, and clone on another for example.

--
Rock [MS-MVP User/Shell]

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Backing up the system
    ... IDE disks mounted in a removable trays, and each clone is bootable. ... When you clone the contents of your working drive to the destination drive (bearing in mind we're talking about removable internal drives in their mobile racks), the destination drive, being for all practical purposes an exact duplicate of the source drive, is bootable and there's no need to edit its boot.ini file. ... the context of archiving several bootable partitions on the same backup drive. ... one must be aware which of the multiple system partitions on a drive has been marked "active". ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Cloning my hard drive?
    ... And obviously the two tasks, clone vs. image, are close enough to argue about. ... I say that because the only reason I am making the backup is for when something goes awry on the internal source drive, and I need to restore the internal source drive from the external backup drive. ... comprehensive backup system of one's day-to-day working HDD. ... I'm not swapping any drives here. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Cloned my HD successfully but the 2nd. attempt was a failure
    ... UNABLE TO CLONE THE CONTENTS OF ONE HD TO ANOTHER HD. ... NOT CLEAR WHETHER THE SAMSUNG HD IS DEFECTIVE AND THAT'S WHAT CAUSING THE ... Since you have the Ghost 2003 program available to you, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Question about backups with Ghost
    ... supply dying and frying both drives at once. ... this clone to the system, but I've never had a problem. ... its crucial to not allow it to see the original for the first boot ... of the clone and the reboot of that clone which it will ask for. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: Backing up the system
    ... >>> IDE disks mounted in a removable trays, and each clone is bootable. ... > and the system partition selection menu to choose ... > clk Disk Management.) ... drives and the disk cloning process. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)