Clone vs. image (I promise not the same ol ground)

[Lil' Dave]

So, I won't go down the road you're
A little unfair given the opening comments on the original tread post.
Even
to Subject was intended to avoid the debate that seems to happen when this
topic has come up on other threads.

The intent is to understand the use of the two techniques and that,
unfortunately, has to be done by comparison.

It's not a question of better or worse, it's understanding the use of each
since I designing/updating my backup methods. Ultimately it's going to
boil
down to 1) how much risk am I willing to take, 2) how time critical is my
use, and 2) how much I'm willing to spend on backup sw and hw.

To make those decision (for me) requires understanding the tools and
techniques. That's been my objective.

Ultimately, when I get a little more understanding (remember, I'm not an
expert), I will be looking for guidance regarding my specific home network
configuration.

Another snipper of original postings in reply. Forget it. You don't want
to talk, you want to lead people to one thing only.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

[............]
Don't let anyone tell you you can't have a clone copy and the
original disk installed at the same boot time because Windows
will get confused with two operating systems installed. The
BIOS or whatever will know where to boot from, and won't
be confused by another disk with the same info on it.

What you say is literally true - a clone and its original OS
can reside in the same machine, even on the same hard drive.
But unless you're using one of the very few cloning utilities
which handles the problem of the clone's first startup in the
presence of its "parent" OS, the "files" in the clone can end
up being merely pointers to the corresponding files in the
"parent" OS. You can edit what you think are separate files
in the two systems, but "they" will actually be one file - the
original file in the "parent" OS. And if you subsequently delete
the "parent" OS and its partition, you also delete your only
copy of that file. The difficult feature of this problem is that it's
random - only a few files are affected. If those files happen
to be part of the registry, you find out very fast, and you can
correct it by re-cloning the "parent" OS. But if those files are
just archived text documents, you may not find out for years
that the file is gone. Like I've said, the way around this problem
is to hide or remove the "parent" OS from view of the clone
when the clone is started up for the first time. Thereafter, the
clone can see its "parent" OS during startup without a problem.
Note that this affects the startup of the clone only. The "parent"
OS can be started up immediately after the cloning, and seeing
its clone has no affect on the "parent's" files or the files of the
clone.

This problem affected the Windows clones produced by all
the cloning utilities, and most people didn't notice it because of
its obscurity and because clones were usually not booted until
the "parent" OS had expired due to hard drive failure. But when
you have multiple clones of the same "parent" OS in the system,
such as I do, this problem is eventually noticed. Fortunately, at
least one cloning utility has solved the problem, that being
Casper 4.0, and the clone can be started up with its "parent" OS
in view, and its files will remain separate from those of its "parent"
OS.

Note also that this problem is a Windows problem (or design
feature by Microsoft to discourage pirating), and it doesn't affect
Linux or OS X or Solaris (as far as I know).

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Lil' Dave" sniped:

Another snipper of original postings in reply. Forget it.
You don't want to talk, you want to lead people to one thing only.

Editing, or "snipping", is standard procedure in Usenet that
keeps down the superflous traffic in irrelevant text. It's quite
properly used when it's just one topic in a lengthy posting that
one wants to address. Each of us wanted to address just one
topic in your posting, and we spared the readers the agony of
reading all the other extraneous verbiage which we may not care
about, or which is irrelevant, and or with which we may even
agree. It was just that "one thing" that you said that were
addressing, so it was that "one thing" that we included in the
quote. The entirety of your posting is still there in the thread
if you want to refer to it.

*TimDaniels*