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Offline Samson

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Image or clone?
« on: November 30, 2012, 11:27:54 am »
Hi Shane,

Just got given a couple of HDDs, have installed one in each of my machines (see sig below), both as slave drives. Formatted both and they are healthy. As a backup would you recommend imaging the master drive or cloning it?
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Offline Shane

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2012, 11:33:08 am »
That depends. Every backup is different depending on the situation.

For myself, here at home I have about 300 GB of data. So I only backup what I cant replace. And so it is a simple backup.

But at some of my customers they have servers going. They dont like down time. So I have it scheduled to do a full image of the drives every night. If it goes down I can do a total restore to a new drive and have it up and running fast instead of reinstalling everything.

So it is up to you. A clone and an image are just the same thing. Backing up the entire drive and saving it to an image file. Or cloning the drive to another. In this case image would be best so other programs dont get confused on which drive to use (The main or the clone).

Shane
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Offline Samson

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2012, 11:37:12 am »
Hi Shane,

Thanks for that.

One final question (on this topic anyway  :wink:)

If I image a disk, and then want to restore that image to a new HDD, will it be bootable?
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Offline Shane

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2012, 11:38:25 am »
Should be. If it is a good backup program it should image everything including the boot sectors :wink:

Shane
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Offline Samson

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2012, 11:47:09 am »
Hi Shane,

Thanks again, just wanted to check first  :shy:

I was looking at Macrium Reflect (free edition) and/or Acronis True Image (seagate edition), I'll give it a go on the weekend.
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Offline Shane

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2012, 11:49:46 am »
I use the better version of Acronis True Image on my customers servers. Mainly for the universal restore feature. Where I can restore the image to all new hardware. Very good and worth the money on servers :-)

Shane
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Offline Samson

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2012, 11:56:29 am »
Thanks, Acronis it is then  :cheesy:

Enjoy your weekend.
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Offline Samson

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2012, 12:09:43 pm »
Update:  Both machines now have a 2nd HDD installed and I have backed up the master drive on each. I feel alot better knowing that the kids' schoolwork is safe and secure for the future. I also created a small partition at the start of each 2nd HDD for the page file. Again I am grateful for your help and advice Shane,

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.
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Offline Shane

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2012, 12:15:11 pm »
If your able try to get either a usb thumb drive or external hard drive and every now and then backup the really important things only to it. Then have that drive unplugged.

2 reason for this.

1. In a bad enough storm, if a lighting strike hits the power lines close it will fry everything in the system, including both drives (This is rare but I have seen it happen. One friend sent me a picture of a hole burned through his motherboard from a lighting strike, the whole was the size of a golf ball).

2. Viruses, unknowing users or just bad luck. With both drives being in the system any one of these things could delete the files.

So by having a backup that is not hooked to the system you keep it that much safer. Myself, I have 2 external drives. 1 stays in a small water proof and fire proof safe while the other is backing up. Worse case situation my work is safe :-)

Shane
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Offline Samson

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2012, 12:24:33 pm »
Yup, gotcha, I do use a couple of small USB drives (one each for the kids, a blue one and a pink one, sexist I know, but we know whose is whose that way  :cheesy:)

There is a parcel under our tree right now that I think may well be a 500GB external drive, but we don't want to spoil the magic do we 
 :wink:

Thanks again my friend.
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Offline Shane

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Re: Image or clone?
« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2012, 12:26:31 pm »
Merry Christmas :-)

Shane
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