'Cloning' a hard drive

[Guest]

I had a bad experience recently where my PC ran very slowly, I thought at
first it was not going to boot, but eventually it did, and now it seems back
to normal.

I was considering buying an external hard drive and making a copy of my
entire internal drive, so that I had all my programs, settings and documernts
should this happen again, and prove to be fatal, unlike my last experience.

Is this an easy thing to do? Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

 

[Anna]

I had a bad experience recently where my PC ran very slowly, I thought at
first it was not going to boot, but eventually it did, and now it seems
back
to normal.

I was considering buying an external hard drive and making a copy of my
entire internal drive, so that I had all my programs, settings and
documernts
should this happen again, and prove to be fatal, unlike my last
experience.

Is this an easy thing to do? Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

ChasHyde:
You're on the right track...

You would be well-served by using a disk cloning/disk imaging program such
as Acronis True Image to completely back up your system.

As you're probably aware, the advantage of these disk cloning/disk imaging
programs is that they are comprehensive in nature - not only do they back up
your user-created data, but they also back up the operating system and all
your programs & applications - in short - everything that's on your
day-to-day working hard drive (HDD).

So through the use of a disk cloning/disk imaging program if and when for
one reason or another your working HDD becomes dysfunctional you are able to
restore the drive to its previous state in a reasonably simple &
straightforward way.

A program such as the Acronis one can either create a "clone" of your
working HDD (the so-called "source" disk) on your "destination" disk, i.e.,
your external USB or Firewire or SATA HDD, or it can create a "disk image" -
in effect, a "snapshot" of your system - which you can store on your
external HDD. There are advantages/disadvantages to each, but in either case
the backup/recovery process is straightforward and effective and should pose
no difficulty for users.

You can avail yourself of the opportunity to download a 15-day trial version
of the Acronis program (http://www.acronis.com) and try it out to determine
if it meets your needs.

(I might mention that for about the past two months or so we've been working
with another disk cloning program - Casper 4.0
(http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper and we've been quite impressed with
this program even to the extent of preferring it to the more popular Acronis
program (at least based on our experience up to now). A trial version is
also available from the developer so take a look at it. The program is
extremely simple to use and quite effective in terms of performance &
speed).

I've posted to this and other XP newsgroups on a number of occasions
step-by-step instructions on using the Acronis program both for disk cloning
& disk imaging and the recovery process. If you're interested I can post
them again.
Anna

 

[Guest]

That would be ace, thanks a lot
Chas

ChasHyde:
You're on the right track...

You would be well-served by using a disk cloning/disk imaging program such
as Acronis True Image to completely back up your system.

As you're probably aware, the advantage of these disk cloning/disk imaging
programs is that they are comprehensive in nature - not only do they back up
your user-created data, but they also back up the operating system and all
your programs & applications - in short - everything that's on your
day-to-day working hard drive (HDD).

So through the use of a disk cloning/disk imaging program if and when for
one reason or another your working HDD becomes dysfunctional you are able to
restore the drive to its previous state in a reasonably simple &
straightforward way.

A program such as the Acronis one can either create a "clone" of your
working HDD (the so-called "source" disk) on your "destination" disk, i.e.,
your external USB or Firewire or SATA HDD, or it can create a "disk image" -
in effect, a "snapshot" of your system - which you can store on your
external HDD. There are advantages/disadvantages to each, but in either case
the backup/recovery process is straightforward and effective and should pose
no difficulty for users.

You can avail yourself of the opportunity to download a 15-day trial version
of the Acronis program (http://www.acronis.com) and try it out to determine
if it meets your needs.

(I might mention that for about the past two months or so we've been working
with another disk cloning program - Casper 4.0
(http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper and we've been quite impressed with
this program even to the extent of preferring it to the more popular Acronis
program (at least based on our experience up to now). A trial version is
also available from the developer so take a look at it. The program is
extremely simple to use and quite effective in terms of performance &
speed).

I've posted to this and other XP newsgroups on a number of occasions
step-by-step instructions on using the Acronis program both for disk cloning
& disk imaging and the recovery process. If you're interested I can post
them again.
Anna

 

[BobN]

I had a bad experience recently where my PC ran very slowly, I thought at
first it was not going to boot, but eventually it did, and now it seems back
to normal.

I was considering buying an external hard drive and making a copy of my
entire internal drive, so that I had all my programs, settings and documernts
should this happen again, and prove to be fatal, unlike my last experience.

Is this an easy thing to do? Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance

If all that you want to do is clone a hard drive, every HDD manufacturer
provides a free utility to do this. No need to spend money on a program
such as Acronis which is expensive and is overkill for simple cloning.

 

[Guest]

Ta Bob, does the utility come with the external drive when you buy it, or is
it available from a website or what? When you say simple cloning, what is the
difference between that and 'non-simple' cloning? If I were to clone a HD by
any means, would I be able to boot and use it like the internal HD, if for
example, the internal drive failed?

 

[Rich Barry]

I think what Bob was referring to was that the commercial programs do
more than just clone your drive. If that's all you
need to do then the manufacture of the hard drive should have a utility
that you can download from their website.

 

[Anna]

ChasHyde:
You're on the right track...

You would be well-served by using a disk cloning/disk imaging program such
as Acronis True Image to completely back up your system.

As you're probably aware, the advantage of these disk cloning/disk imaging
programs is that they are comprehensive in nature - not only do they back
up your user-created data, but they also back up the operating system and
all your programs & applications - in short - everything that's on your
day-to-day working hard drive (HDD).

So through the use of a disk cloning/disk imaging program if and when for
one reason or another your working HDD becomes dysfunctional you are able
to restore the drive to its previous state in a reasonably simple &
straightforward way.

A program such as the Acronis one can either create a "clone" of your
working HDD (the so-called "source" disk) on your "destination" disk,
i.e., your external USB or Firewire or SATA HDD, or it can create a "disk
image" - in effect, a "snapshot" of your system - which you can store on
your external HDD. There are advantages/disadvantages to each, but in
either case the backup/recovery process is straightforward and effective
and should pose no difficulty for users.

You can avail yourself of the opportunity to download a 15-day trial
version of the Acronis program (http://www.acronis.com) and try it out to
determine if it meets your needs.

(I might mention that for about the past two months or so we've been
working with another disk cloning program - Casper 4.0
(http://www.fssdev.com/products/casper and we've been quite impressed with
this program even to the extent of preferring it to the more popular
Acronis program (at least based on our experience up to now). A trial
version is also available from the developer so take a look at it. The
program is extremely simple to use and quite effective in terms of
performance & speed).

I've posted to this and other XP newsgroups on a number of occasions
step-by-step instructions on using the Acronis program both for disk
cloning & disk imaging and the recovery process. If you're interested I
can post them again.
Anna

ChasHyde:
You can, as others have informed you, use a disk cloning program that's
provided by a number of HDD manufacturers, including Seagate - Maxtor, WD,
and others. This type of program is packaged with their retail, boxed
offerings of the HDD and can also usually be downloaded from the
manufacturer's website. They're software programs; they do not include an
external enclosure

They're generally fine to use when you purchase a new HDD and all you're
primarily interested in is cloning the contents of your old HDD to a new
one. However we don't usually recommend them for routine, systematic disk
cloning that one undertakes for backup & recovery purposes. They're somewhat
awkward to use for many users and - in our experience - considerably slower
and less effective than the commercial third-party products such as Acronis
True Image. Still, many users do use them for routine disk cloning and
you're certainly free to give them a try.

The commercial disk cloning programs such as the Acronis one are not
terribly expensive. I notice that Staples has that program on sale this week
for $29.99 and I would guess the program is available from online vendors at
or near that price.

To answer another question you raised in another posting...

If you clone the contents of your day-to-day working HDD to a USB external
HDD, that device is not bootable, however, the contents can be cloned back
to your internal HDD (assuming it's non-defective) for recovery purposes,
including, of course, a bootable state.
Anna

 

[Dave]

Whatever you decide, don't let XP "see" your copy of it.

A clone hard drive should be physically unavailable for use after a copy.