Re: Backing up entire system partition : image or clone ?


"LeeG" wrote:

I have Partition Magic. I have looked into investing in a cloning program
such as Acronis but would like to make use of a back up drive. (I would
rather pay £££ for a spare drive than another copying program.) Would you
use PM to create a copy on the backup drive to store in case of any future
problems. (Either viral infection, hardware failure or software failure)?

"Jim" wrote:


"sai.an" <saian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5E2C8687-CF02-4924-844C-F19296690CA9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am operating a small home-office network, consisting of 2 almost
identical
PC's, both having work environments (XP + umpteen applications) that are
identical at this moment, but are likely to drift apart in the future.
In addition, I have an external HDD of 400 GByte capacity, just for safety
(it connects to anyone of the PC's via Firewire and for the moment hosts
only
data).
My goal is now to be protected against the failure of anyone of my 2
built-in HDD's : one of them has been running for 4 years...
I wish I could organize in such a way that -should one of these HDD's
break
down- I could rapidly configure a replacement HDD by plugging it as slave
into the healthy computer and loading it with the needed complete system,
which I would obtain from a backup in the external unit.
So, my question is : should I backup my "C" partitions into the external
unit by using an "image" process (with which software ? I have
Datakeeper),
which means having to do later a "restore" operation, or should I do a
cloning operation (I have Casper) and be ready for "cloning the clone" ?
And, last but not least, which type of ad-hoc partitions should I create
in
my external unit for receiving the backups ?
Many thanks to those who will have the patience to read me and to give me
advice.
--
From Claude, with greetings from Paris.

I usually associate "clone" with "make an identical disk". This is the
quickest way to replace
an entire disk. Quite a few programs can clone disks; the one that I use is
Acronis. It does
take a long time to clone one disk to another.

Another way to accomplish what I understand that you wish to do is to use a
backup program
to create a full backup file of the system partition. Such a file can be
placed almost anywhere
you wish. I do make a system backup, but the file resides on another disk.
My reason for not
using a partition on the system disk is that there can be no assurance that
such a partition can
be read on a disk with another partition failure.

Acronis contains a method for creating a CD which can recover Acronis backup
files. In addition,
Acronis (and perhaps others) provides a plugin for BartPE.

What I would do, and you may not be willing to do such, is to buy
replacement disks for each computer.
I would then clone the system disk for a given computer onto its replacement
disk.

Jim




LeeG :
Your problem is similar to mine and your suggestion not to spend
EuroEuroEuro on a specific software is valid !
I had not noticed so far that PartitionMagic gives the possibility to make
"clones" (I have PM version 8.0), and when needing to clone my system a short
while ago (to configure PC#2 identically to PC#1) I had used Casper ; there
is a trial version which I found to be sufficient for one-time usage, and it
is easy to understand and quick.
Concerning backing-up via the "image + restore" technique, I have written
something potentially wrong in my initial post : I am not sure at all that
DataKeeper is the right choice for system folders and files. For this the
ad-hoc softwares are things like TrueImage or DriveImage ; I have tried to
use them in the past, but found them very very tricky. You may be more expert
than me...

Greetings,

Claude
.

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