Re: Cloning my hard drive?

It worked for me a long time ago.

And you found that everyone here is highly opinionated. And obviously the two tasks, clone vs. image, are close enough to argue about. Personally if my HD crapped out and I had a cloned HD and an image, I'd be happy either way. The data is there.

See even I'm opinionated. Good luck.

jetjock wrote:
On Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:40:27 -0600, "Bill in Co."
<not_really_here@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Anna wrote:
(The issue here is whether to use a disk-cloning or disk-imaging program to
establish & maintain a comprehensive backup system involving one's
day-to-day working HDD. Have I correctly stated the issue involved, Bill?)
Well, not exactly, but more or less. I say that because the only reason I am making the backup is for when something goes awry (normally with some software installation) on the internal source drive, and I need to restore the internal source drive from the external backup drive. And with all the experiments I am doing, that *does* happen a fair number of times. So it's more for recovering the entire system just as it was before the experiments. More below.

"Bill in Co." <not_really_here@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uAb62kkpIHA.4928@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
OK, and at the possible risk of beating a dead horse, let me float this in
regards to backing up the C: system partition using an external USB hard
drive enclosure for backup:

IF one only (and always) wants to keep the current system HD as the system
source drive, and never wants to swap it out with the backup drive (which
in > my case is an USB external drive, and that is difficult to do), it
still might be advantageous to use imaging instead of cloning, I think.

Because if you do the cloning bit, and need to copy it back, you will
still have to make a clone backup AND then copy that clone partition back
to the source drive. And when one is using an external USB hard drive
enclosure, it can be a real PIA to swap those hard drives.

So in this case I can't see any advantage to making a clone. And in fact
(IIRC), when a clone is copied back, it copies back the entire HD or HD
partition (including the unused space), which would take a lot longer.
(But granted, the Smart Cloning portion of creating (updating) the clone
would be faster, however)

If something is mistaken here, please correct me.

Bill:
I know we have discussed this issue what seems ad infinitum and I really
don't know what else I can add to my previous comments but let me give it
one more try...

As you know, we greatly prefer the Casper 4 disk-cloning program for the
purposes I indicated above in stating the issue before us.

The Casper program is a disk-cloning program. It does not have disk-imaging
capability like the Acronis True Image program which has both capabilities.

Again, we're talking from the perspective of establishing & maintaining a
comprehensive backup system of one's day-to-day working HDD. A backup system
that the user will presumably employ on a frequent basis - perhaps daily,
perhaps every other day, perhaps every three days, perhaps once a week.
Whatever. But a backup system that will be reasonably current with the
user's existing system.

When all is said & done, what is important from a expenditure of time view
is how long will it take for the user to routinely backup his or her HDD on
a frequent basis. Do we *really* care how long it will take to clone back
the contents of the "destination" HDD, i.e., the recipient of the clone to
the internal HDD that has become unbootable/dysfunctional because of a
corrupted operating system?
Yes, I most certainly DO care (for the reason I mentioned at the top), since I do this fairly regularly due to all my software installation tests. More below.

Or how long it will take to clone back the
contents of the "destination" HDD to a new HDD that has replaced a defective
internal HDD?
But that case is different, and *much* less common (i.e., that the internal drive became truly defective - meaning, a hardware failure).

Of course not. How often will those situations occur?
Presumably they're relatively infrequent events, would you not agree?
Not at all on the first item!! But yes on the second item.

But what is important and what we are interested in (again from a
"expenditure-of-time" point-of-view) is how long will it take for the user
to *routinely* backup his or her working HDD. We know the shorter the time
the more incentive the user will have to make frequent backups. - a most
desirable thing, is it not? And isn't that the real "bottom-line" here?
Not for me. Time and convenience are, however. And without any disk swapping (since I'm using an external USB HD enclosure for backing up my system, which means I *must* be able to restore or reclone back the original source drive). I'm not swapping any drives here. The *only* time I would want to go to all that trouble is if there is a hardware failure of the source drive.

As we have discussed, the "SmartClone" feature of the Casper 4 program
results in the routine disk-cloning operation taking only a fraction of the
time other disk-cloning (or disk- imaging) programs take re this backup
operation. The Casper program has this unique (at least unique in my
experience) ability to detect only the data changes in the system being
cloned since the previous disk-cloning operation; consequently the program
needs only a considerably shorter period of time to complete subsequent
(routine) disk-cloning operations. That is the overriding advantage of
Casper 4 as compared with other disk-cloning & disk-imaging programs in my
experience. (There are other advantages but we'll forego discussing them
here).
Yes, we've covered that advantage already at length.

To illustrate this, here's an example I recently posted...
"Earlier today we had occasion (for routine backup purposes) to use the
Casper 4 program to clone the contents of a user's day-to-day working HDD -
the "source" disk - to another internal HDD - the "destination" drive.
Today's disk-cloning operation involved about 40 GB of data (the entire
contents, of course, of the source HDD). (The first (initial) disk-cloning
operation involving these drives took place a couple of weeks ago. That
initial disk-cloning operation took about 45 minutes - probably about the
same amount of time any disk-cloning or disk-imaging program would take).

Routine (nearly daily) disk-cloning operations involving these same two HDDs
have taken place over the past two weeks or so since that initial
disk-cloning operation. Obviously changes in the data have taken place over
that time. Today's disk-cloning operation took about 3 minutes. Three
minutes.

And should the user undertake another disk-cloning operation within the next
day or so the operation will again take a relatively short period of time.
So there is an enormous incentive for users to backup their systems on a
current basis knowing that the expenditure of time in doing so will be
relatively slight. Heretofore this has been a problem with disk-cloning
programs because each time the disk-cloning operation was undertaken it was
a "fresh" operation and took a considerable amount of time.

I trust this example will give you a clear idea of the value of this Casper
4 "incremental clone" capability in terms of using this type of program as a
routine comprehensive backup program.
I already understand this, Anna! (we don't have to go over the smart cloning part again :-).

Again, understand that as a result of the disk-cloning operation the
recipient of the clone - your "destination" HDD - will be a precise copy of
your "source" HDD at that particular point-in-time."

Let me make it clear that should a user's interest be *only* in a one-time
disk-cloning (or disk-imaging) operation and have little or no interest in
using such a program as a routine comprehensive backup system as we have
discussed, then it really doesn't matter which disk-cloning or disk-imaging
program he or she uses. In that case all that is important is that the
program is effective in transferring the contents of one HDD to another HDD.

So I'm not entirely clear precisely what you're driving at as you discuss
"backing up the C: system partition using an external USB hard drive
enclosure for backup".
I'll re-explain below.

Using a disk-cloning program one would ordinarily
clone the entire contents of his/her internal boot HDD to (in your example)
a USB external HDD. Fine. And then from time-to-time continue to clone the
contents of the internal drive to the USBEHD in order to maintain a current
backup of one's system, right?

Now what? You seem to be indicating that either the internal HDD becomes
dysfunctional or defective so that it will be necessary to clone the
contents of the USBEHD back to the internal HDD - either the same internal
HDD
YES!! That is precisely it. More below...

or a replacement disk should the drive be defective.
Not very commonly.

OK, we do that. What's the problem here?

Yes, if the internal HDD has become defective and the user desires to remove
the HDD from the USB external enclosure and install the drive as his/her
internal HDD, then he/she can do that, yes? Or, as we have indicated, clone
back the contents of the USBEHD to a new internal HDD. Whatever.
But in this case, there is no real advantage to using cloning, with the possible exception in time savings during the Smart Cloning phase. But the Overall Total Time it takes (including recloning back to the source drive, using a cloning program) might come out the same, or even more - I just don't know.

For example, it might take longer overall if, when you clone back the destination partition to the source drive partition, it wastes time copying the *entire partition* (all sectors), and not just the actually used, data portion sectors of the partition. See what I mean?

In the final analysis if the user is more comfortable with using a
disk-imaging program rather than a disk-cloning program, so be it. As the
saying goes, "Yer pays yer money and yer takes yer cherce."
Anna

Bill,

This simple question I asked has gotten a lot bigger than I
anticipated. :-)

FWIW, I do a total backup of my internal "C" drive every night to
an external eSATA drive. I have it scheduled to run while I'm eating
dinner. A total backup takes 20 minutes to backup 43GB to a 30GB
file, and it took just slightly longer than that to "restore" the
image to my new "C" drive. When I do "differential" backups (only
files that have changed since last backup), backup file is only about
3GB and backup and restore both take about 17minutes.

Since I use the backed-up image as a replacement for Norton's
"GoBack" to replace files that I've inadvertently goobered up somehow,
I need the imaging capability of TI vs. the clone function of Casper.

Hope that helps.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT-True Image Backup
    ... Make sure the USB drives file system is NTFS and not FAT32.. ... Jaymon is correct in that the disk image you create and save to the D: ... partition of your USB external HDD will have no effect on the other ... Step-by-Step Instructions for Using the Acronis True Image Program to Backup ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: OT-True Image Backup
    ... Make sure the USB drives file system is NTFS and not FAT32.. ... Jaymon is correct in that the disk image you create and save to the D: ... partition of your USB external HDD will have no effect on the other ... Since the disk images you will be creating (at least the initial backup ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Need help backing up my C: drive
    ... I tried using Windows' backup and restore which works for important data ... consider a disk imaging program such as ... Acronis True Image to clone the contents of your day-to-day working HDD onto ... With both hard drives connected, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Acronis and new disk
    ... with using the disk copying/disk cloning programs such as the MaxBlast ... contents of your 40 GB HDD to your new 120 GB HDD rather than creating a ... Step-by-Step Instructions for Using the Acronis True Image Program to Backup ... With both hard drives connected, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Partition help
    ... change that makes the current clone outdated. ... I also backup email and the email address book to the external hard drive on ... the idea of backing up to a partition on the same hard drive ... your HDD. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
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