Question about Ghost

[Magnusfarce]

I'm using W2K and have a question about using Ghost with it that I don't
know where to ask, so I'll try it here. This is such a basic question that
searches on Google and at Symantec's website haven't yet provided me with an
answer.

What is the basic difference between creating a backup image and cloning a
hard drive using Ghost? When would one be more appropriate than the other?
(Is cloning used only for copying an OS onto other identical computers,
i.e., a sort of production line? And is a backup image the best choice for
routine backups of a system?)

Any help would be appreciated.

- Magnusfarce

 

[Colon Terminus]

Cloning:
Creates an exact copy of a hard disk on another hard disk.

Imaging:
Creates file containing an exact image of a hard disk, or partition, on a
partition of another hard disk or onto CD(s) or DVD(s).

Clone creates a hard disk ... Image creates a file.

 

[Magnusfarce]

Thanks for the help.

Were my guesses about the reasons for using one or the other anywhere near
correct? Let's say I want to back up my system so that in the event of a
major HDD wipeout, I can simply restore the entire OS, programs files, data
files, (everything) back onto the base hard drive (or a replacement if
necessary) and get going quickly again. Should I clone or backup? (BTW, I
would normally be using either CD's and/or another separate HDD in the
computer.)

- Magnusfarce

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

Thanks for the help.

Were my guesses about the reasons for using one or the other anywhere near
correct? Let's say I want to back up my system so that in the event of a
major HDD wipeout, I can simply restore the entire OS, programs files, data
files, (everything) back onto the base hard drive (or a replacement if
necessary) and get going quickly again. Should I clone or backup? (BTW, I
would normally be using either CD's and/or another separate HDD in the
computer.)

- Magnusfarce

You typically create an image file (not clone) for backup purposes,
though you could do the clone and keep the extra hard drive laying
around to swap in or clone back to the original if your original went
belly up.

 

[Magnusfarce]

Excellent. I think I'm getting there. From your answer and C.T.'s, what I
understand is that if I clone my existing hard drive onto another, this new
one is overwritten from the ground up with the cloned data, forming a sort
of "closed session", and cannot be modified or added to after that. (Hence
your comment about setting it aside.) On the other hand, creating a backup
image simply writes a large file (or several large files) to a drive or
other medium.

Let's say I have my main HDD, called "A", and a second unused HDD, called
"B", and drive "A" gets eaten by a virus. If I've cloned A onto B, then I'm
not sure I see a way to clone "B" back to "A". Would I then have to
essentially switch drives and operate with "B" as my new main drive, or
would there be a way to move the cloned info back onto the "A" drive?

One more question re the cloning process: If the "B" drive is partitioned,
can I clone to that partition with no problems?

Thanks for all the help.

- Magnusfarce

 

[*Vanguard*]

"Magnusfarce" said in

Thanks for the help.

Were my guesses about the reasons for using one or the other anywhere
near correct? Let's say I want to back up my system so that in the
event of a major HDD wipeout, I can simply restore the entire OS,
programs files, data files, (everything) back onto the base hard
drive (or a replacement if necessary) and get going quickly again.
Should I clone or backup? (BTW, I would normally be using either
CD's and/or another separate HDD in the computer.)

- Magnusfarce

For backup, you create a disk image. That is because it will occupy
less bytes than a clone. In Ghost, you may have to enable an option to
NOT include empty sectors. Empty sectors are skipped in DriveImage.
They are still recorded as empty and will get created as empty when the
disk image is restored but there's no point in recording the contents of
an empty sector in a disk image.

With hard drives getting really big these days, you may end up using
another hard drive to store the drive image files. Swapping dozens of
CDs or DVDs is tedious, increases unreliability (because one of the many
CDs can fail to read or get damaged), and very time consuming. You
still want to save disk images instead of cloning to conserve space on
that backup drive. That way, you might be able to get more than one
disk image file saved on that backup drive (so you have more than one
snapshot of your system).

Disk cloning is really when you want to setup another machine NOW the
same as another. Restoring a disk image file onto a drive then creates
the clone but takes longer to complete at that time (as opposed to the
spending the time before to create the disk image). If you are trying
to provide for disaster recovery so you can restore your system then
choose how fast a recovery is needed. A cloned disk sitting around or
left disconnected inside the box can be switched immediately (well, as
fast as you can open the box to switch to the clone drive). Restoring
from a disk image will take longer but the file is smaller so less space
is needed to retain it (i.e., less CDs or more image files on a backup
drive). The contents of the cloned disk or one restored from a disk
image are identical (and their physical layout will be the same if you
perform a physical disk image; I think Ghost defaults to a logical disk
image while DriveImage defaults to a physical disk image but also skips
the empty sectors in the image file). So it really depends on what
resources you want to consume in the interim and how quickly you demand
for speed of disaster recovery.

 

[Josef Stalin]

though you could do the clone and keep the extra hard drive laying
around to swap in or clone back to the original if your original went
belly up.

That's what I do. Better safe than sorry.

 

[anonymous]

Hi,

I use the clone option to keep a complete copy of my drive available in
case the main boy takes a dump. Just a switch of the jumpers and the
clone drive is an exact duplicate of the first. You can just as easily
clone the backup copy back to the main drive for a complete restore.

I've found Ghost doesn't erase the drive being cloned too, so files
there that aren't on the original drive aren't overwritten, just
ignored. I can also clone a larger drive to a smaller one as long as the
files being cloned to the smaller drive don't total to more than the
space available.

I actually have two clones of my main drive on the second, backup drive,
usually taken a week apart. This is just in case I overwrite a copy
that's not as good as one taken later.

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

Excellent. I think I'm getting there. From your answer and C.T.'s, what I
understand is that if I clone my existing hard drive onto another, this new
one is overwritten from the ground up with the cloned data, forming a sort
of "closed session", and cannot be modified or added to after that. (Hence
your comment about setting it aside.) On the other hand, creating a backup
image simply writes a large file (or several large files) to a drive or
other medium.

Let's say I have my main HDD, called "A", and a second unused HDD, called
"B", and drive "A" gets eaten by a virus. If I've cloned A onto B, then I'm
not sure I see a way to clone "B" back to "A". Would I then have to
essentially switch drives and operate with "B" as my new main drive, or
would there be a way to move the cloned info back onto the "A" drive?

One more question re the cloning process: If the "B" drive is partitioned,
can I clone to that partition with no problems?

Thanks for all the help.

- Magnusfarce

Cloning a drive simply makes an exact duplicate of the source drive.
After the clone operation is complete, you can swap in the target as
your boot drive and the system will boot up copletely normally as if
nothing had changed. Likewise, you could leave the target in w/ the
source and boot from the source. Windows will assign drive letters to
the volumes that are created on the source and you can view and modify
the contents of the drive as you could the source.

When you clone a drive, the data is transferred sector by sector, not
cluster by cluster. The difference is that clusters are at the
operating system level. Sectors are at the physical drive level.
Copying sectors is many times faster than clusters, so cloning a hard
drive that has many GB of data is many times faster than sopying that
same data from within Windows.

Anyway, I digress. The point I was trying to make is that sectors
include formatting information, so when you clone a drive, the process
formats the target at the same time. So, in fact, you typically clone
partitions or drives to unpartitioned space. If you try to clone an
NTFS partition to a FAT partition, the target will be NTFS because the
target will be reformatted. It is completely overwritten and it is
indentical to the source in every way, including NTFS permissions and
ownership attributes.

So, to recover a drive that has been FUBAR'ed by a virus, just put your
backup cloned drive in as the source and clone it back to the target.
It will wipe out everything on that drive and restore it to the state it
was in when you cloned it to your backup drive. The one exception might
be boot sector viruses since they are not in the partitions themselves,
but that's another discussion.

I hope that helps!!