Windows 10: Recommendations on Cloning Software

Lots of posts but when it comes down to it difference between cloning and images is simple.

You clone a drive to make an exact copy of an existing drive eg upgrading to larger drive or ssd.

You make images of an existing drive to a another drive, with primary intent to restore image to SAME drive that was backed up e.g. Windows has got corrupted or infected with ransomware.

It just so happens you can restore image to a DIFFERENT drive i.e. same as cloning but a two step process involving a tertiary drive.

Problem with cloning as a backup method is that it wipes the target drive. An image backup is simply another compressed file on a drive.

 

Yeah, I have never heard that one before!

Yeah, "pissed" is just short for "pissed off" in the US.

 

I can tell you why. I've got several computers on my network. I do backups by saving images of the drives to a NAS - Network Attached Storage unit. If one of the computers' drives should fail, I will install a new drive into the computer, boot it from the Macrium Reflect rescue drive, and restore the image stored on the NAS to the new drive installed in the computer. Much better solution that having a spare hard drive for each computer that I would have to connect every time I wanted to make a backup clone of that computer.

Also by saving images vs. cloning you can keep multiple images over time. What happens if your computer gets infected with a virus, and before you realize it has a virus, you do your normal clone type backup? Now you've just cloned the virus as well. With multiple image backups you can go back to the image before the virus and restore, even if the most recent image you made had the virus already on it.

 

Are you a network admin or something?

How hard would it be to set up a NAS at home?

I can see your point.

What exactly is the difference between an "image" and a "clone"?

 

Read what cereberus posted on page #29, as I think he explained it quite well.

 

This is just on my home network, and a NAS is very easy to set up. I have two NAS units, each with 2x 3TB hard drives. Each NAS is a RAID 1 box, so each one contains two hard drives that are exact mirrors of each other p so the total capacity of each box is 3 TB, if one drive fails in the box, all you have to do is swap it out, and the box will mirror the remaining hard drive with the data to the new hard drive inserted automatically.

A clone is an exact copy of a hard drive. You should be able to clone one drive to another, and the second drive will act and work exactly like the first drive. My RAID 1 NAS has two hard drives in it that are clones (mirrors) of each other, so if one fails, the other one will still be good and act just like the failed one.

An image is the contents of one or more partitions that gets saved to a single file. It's like the old .zip files. One advantage is that the image can be compressed, a clone cannot. So my 120GB SSD can be saved in a 40GB image file. If it was cloned, the clone would have to be 120GB as well. If the 120GB SSD fails, then replace it with a new one, boot from a rescue drive (USB flash drive), restore the saved image to the new 120GB SSD, and then the new SSD will work just like the old one it replaced.

 

If I have a laptop with a 1TB internal drive, and I clone it to an external drive, I need 1TB of space.

You imply that an "image" of my 1TB internal drive would be smaller, yet identical to a "clone"?

 

Imaging software may only image the used space of a drive, a clone or a sector by sector exact copy will copy the free space too. Plus imaging software can use compression to make the image smaller than the used space being imaged.

 

Think of cloning as running a letter thru the copier. You get an exact bit-for-bit, pixel-by-pixel copy.

Think of Imaging as rewriting the same letter on a post-it note, eliminating duplicate contiguous characters and spaces, and inserting counters for those characters instead.

The post-it note will be smaller, generally only 60% of the whole letter.

 

So an advantage of a "clone" is that it is "plug and play", whereas an "image" requires that it be "restored" to a target disk, however the advantage is that it save storage space, so you might be able to put two "images" onto one backup disk, right?

 

In a nutshell, yes. a restored image creates functionally identical partition(s) on the target drive, be that the original drive or a replacement for a failed one. A cloned drive includes everything, including the free space - theoretically allowing you to recover permanently deleted data with the appropriate tools.

 

However, most cloning software does not do true bit by bit cloning. Most cloning software, by default, really only does file copy. See the below screenshot from the Advanced Options menu of Macrium Reflect. Intelligent copy is selected by default, which only copies over files. You would have to change that to Forensic Sector Copy to be able to, theoretically, retrieve deleted files from the clone.

 

Thanks for the clarification. For my sins, I mainly use the built in MS system imaging. I'm unfamiliar with the finer details of Macrium. I may well have to become familiar, now that Microsoft has deprecated their imaging in the upcoming Fall Creators Update. *Smile

 

IIRC, when I set up Macrium Free, differential backup wasn't available. I went with incremental. I have a limited understanding of the both diff and incr. Which is more effective? Is it worth paying for the full product too get diff? I freed up several spare neurons in anticipation

Thank you.

 

Good point!