Clarification on Hard drive cloning, please.

[regulo]

Hi, ABers,
Can you clear up a few points for me, re: the above. I've read through previous answers relating to this on AB, can you tell me: if I use, say, Macrium to back up to an external drive, then should my internal drive fail, would it be true to say I just then boot from the external drive, and copy back everything to the new internal drive? Has anyone actually done this? Is it similar to good old DOS where a Copy command did just that?
Also, when I bought this laptop it was supplied with a working Windows Vista Home Basic OS, but no installation discs. What am I supposed to do if my hard drive crashes?

Many Thanks in Advance.

[Old_Geezer]

I have no experience of Macrium, but it is fair to say if you have a true clone of a system drive then it should reboot and have all that was on it at the time of the copy. But a 'normal copy' may not copy across hidden and/or system files etc. so you need the right tools.

[MarkRae]

Not really...

Backups and cloning aren't (usually) the same thing, though most modern backup software can do both.

Backups are something that you will want to do on a daily basis, and will typically contain your working data (documents, photos, music etc) plus maybe other things on your machine which change often such as the Windows registry. Then, if you accidentally overwrite a document or delete a folder, it's a simple matter just to restore that from last night's backup.

Cloning, on the other hand, makes an exact copy of every byte of data on your hard drive onto an external drive. This is at such a low level (relatively speaking) that it can't be done from the boot drive. Therefore, the cloning software will typically have the ability to create boot media (usually a CD these days). If your hard drive fries, you replace it with a new one, boot from the CD, and restore the cloned image. Then you restore the most recent backup, and you're up and running.

I create a clone of my various machines' hard drives typically only when something major changes, such as a lot of Windows updates or a new service pack.

[ChuckFickens]

I've not used Macrium, but in general you would either create a clone of your hard drive which the computer would happily boot from and the could then re-clone the clone back to another drive, the disadvantage of this is you couldn't use your external drive for anything else.

Or,

you create an image of your hard drive which will be a single file on your external drive and if you need to replace your hard drive you would boot your computer from a CD which would then let you recreate an exact copy of your current drive onto a new hard drive. doing it this way means you can still use your external drive (though obviously if the external drive fails you lose your image)

As for the system CD's, there is often a utility on the hard drive of new computers to create a set of system restore disk, if there is you should do this. If there isn't there is normally a recovery partition on the drive that would let you restore the system back to factory state, but obviously if the drive dies totally you lose the ability to do that so you come back to doing a clone or an image of the drive.

[Old_Geezer]

Just to mention, I bought a reconditioned PC some years back, and when the system failed I discovered that the hidden recovery partition was corrupt. Spent some time & money trying to get disks to fix it, but in the end lost interest. Not been keen on this no installation disk strategy ever since.

[regulo]

Thanks for your most useful replies. I've wondered about system restore discs before. I've always made them, as a matter of course, but if the hard drive fails completely, there's no way a complete Windows OS can be on 2 dvds, so what use are they? The data on the hidden partition is inaccessible if the drive's defunct, so where do you go from there? Any recommendations as to good cloning software?

[ChuckFickens]

"there's no way a complete Windows OS can be on 2 dvds"

Yes there is! in fact 2 DVDs will include a lot of extras, windows7 comes on 1 DVD if you buy it.

Acronis true image is my personal favourite cloning/image software but it's not free. However if any one of your hard drives is a seagate or maxtor drive you can download a free version of it from seagate.

http://www.seagate.co.../downloads/discwizard

Or if any of your drives are western digital then WD do a free version of acronis too.

http://support.wdc.co...addetail.asp?swid=119

[regulo]

THanks, Chuck,
So if I read it correctly, the system back-up discs I created when I first booted up the computer will have Windows Vista Basic on them? Any way to check?

[ChuckFickens]

Yes the disks you were asked to create when you first got the laptop will have everything on them to restore the computer back to the state it was in when you first got it out the box. I can't think of a way of fully testing them without actually reinstalling your system though.

[regulo]

Thanks, again, Chuck,

Now I've got a Seagate drive, besides the system restore dvds, and routine back-ups of my user files to the hidden partition, AND USB stick, I'll get acronis and make a clone on the external drive. I bet I'll still not be able to restore it all should the worst occur!! Perhaps I shouldn't worry so much.

[ChuckFickens]

I wouldn't clone onto an external drive, create an image onto the drive. If you clone you are making an exact copy that will fill the external drive, an image will be one single (large!) file on the drive that you can use to create a exact duplicate of the drive you cloned from.

Cloning is for replacing hard drives really, imaging is for backing up a hard drive.

[regulo]

Right, I'll let you know how I get on, in due course. Watch this space!!! Thanks to you all, again.