Anna wrote:
"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
If I'm wrong here, please advise, Anna.
"WaIIy" wrote in message
...
I'm very confused. I think you are saying I can clone my C drive to a
partition on another drive.
I didn't think I could do that.
Let's say my C drive has three partitions. I don't think you can
clone
that to one partition on another drive. Doesn't make sense to me.
My understanding is a CLONE wipes out the destination drive.
I guess I need to understand when you mean COPY and when you mean
CLONE in your descriptions above. or, I'm just confused 
Anna wrote:
Wally:
Yes, as I've tried to explain, Casper 5 does have the capability of
doing exactly that.
You can set up as many partitions as you desire on your destination
drive - say a USB external HDD - and clone those three partitions
(presumably
encompassing the entire source disk, yes?) to *any* partition that you
set up on your destination HDD. The *only* requirement is that the
destination partition is, of course, sufficient in size to hold the
contents of your
source HDD, i.e., the three partitions. In other words you're cloning
the disk containing the three partitions to a single partition on the
destination drive if that's what you want. The remaining partitions on
the destination drive can then be used for *any* purpose you want.
On the other hand, if you wanted to clone *individual* partitions on
the
source disk to a particular partition on the destination drive you
could
also do that. It would simply be a partition-to-partition clone.
Hope I've made this clear.
Anna
Bill in Co. wrote:
Well then it appears I didn't understand it fully. I was under the
impression you could EITHER do a partition-by-partition cloning
operation,
OR clone the entire HD with or without several partitions over the
destination disk.
And NOT that you could clone, for example 5 individual source drive
partitions over to a SINGLE partition on the destination drive, UNLESS
that one is just a big extended one that incorporates the five
partitions - but it's still really 5 partitions on the destination drive
that were
effectively cloned, and not just one, and each would presumably have a
different drive letter assoicated with it. Or maybe it depends on how
you look at it.
Bill:
First of all, as I've tried to emphasize...
Forget about drive letter assignments on partitions of a USB external HDD
in
the context of this discussion re the Casper 5 disk-cloning process. Drive
letter assignments involving a USBEHD (designed to be the recipient device
of one or more clones) are of *NO* relevance in this process. Please try
to
understand that.
Comment: they can be of significance to me. I'm not just talking about in
terms of succeeding in copying the data or not. More on that below.
Let me try to make this partition-disk cloning process as clear as
possible
using the following example...
(For simplicity's sake we're using approximate figures)...
Let's assume the user's source (boot) HDD - say a 300 GB HDD - contains
three partitions - the C: partition, the D: partition and the E:
partition.
Obviously the C: partition is his or her's boot partition. Let's say the
C:
partition is 80 GB in size and contains 30 GB of data.
Now the D: partition may have been used for installing the user's
programs,
or for
whatever purpose. Let's say the D: partition is 90 GB in size and contains
50 GB of data.
The E: partition is likewise used for data storage of one type or another.
Let's say that E: partition is 130 GB in size and contains 40 GB of data.
So the three partitions totaling 300 GB in size contain 120 GB of data.
OK. On the source drive we have 3 partitions with a total of 120 GB of
data between them, but in separate partitions, *which is presumably the way
we want to keep it* on the backup drive. More below.
A more-or-less typical scenario followed by many users in
multi-partitioning
their
day-to-day working HDD, right? Although obviously the number of partitions
and amount of data will, of course, be different from user-to-user.
So in our example the source disk's first partition of 80 GB represents
26%
of the total disk space of the 300 GB HDD.
The second partion of 90 GB represents 31% of the total disk space.
And the final third partition of 130 GB represents 43% of total disk
space.
Now the user has a 250 GB USBEHD which he or she intends to be the
recipient of one or more clones (or partitions) of the user's source HDD.
And strictly (or at least normally) speaking, that means each of the three
partitions must be preserved on the backup too, and not combined into one
partition there.
Using the Casper 5 program, the user has various options to choose from...
1. He or she can clone the *entire* contents of their source HDD
(containing
the three partitions) to a single partition created on the USBEHD. In
effect, a disk-to-disk clone. The user would not have to partition/format
the USBEHD "destination" drive in this situation - the destination HDD
could
even be a brand-new out-of-the-box disk; the partitioning/formatting
process
would be automatically accomplished by the Casper program through its
disk-cloning process.
Under this scenario Casper would automatically create three partitions on
the USB destination HDD, mirroring the partitions of the source drive.
That's my point - yes. (and that they will also show up in explorer with
their own drive letters, naturally, bumping up any flash drives letter
assignments that are plugged in now in terms of their previous drive
letters, which can be a nuisance).
But since the destination drive is of a different total size than the
source
drive the resultant partitions will be established on a *proportional*
basis.
Right. Of course.
So partition #1 of that 250 destination drive GB drive will be 65 GB (26%
of
the total disk space);
Partition #2 will be 77 GB (31% of the total disk space);
Partition #3 will be 108 GB (43% of the total disk space).
AGAIN, FORGET ABOUT THE DRIVE LETTER ASSIGNMENTS ON THE DESTINATION DRIVE.
THEY HAVE NO RELEVANCE IF & WHEN THEIR CONTENTS ARE USED FOR RESTORATION
PURPOSES.
No, but they CAN have relevance to me (besides simply looking at this from
the point of view of restoration purposes), as I suggested above. Like if
you are keeping that external drive connected during normal use.
2. However, the user will, of course, have another option in creating
(ordinarily through Disk Management) whatever number & size partitions he
or
she desires on their destination HDD. They could then clone the entire
contents of their source HDD to one of the partitions so created (a
disk-to-partition) clone,
And end up with 3 partitions on the destination drive. So when you say
this, it sounds like youre saying it's combining 3 into 1, but it's not.
So you are saying in this example it will copy the contents of the 3 source
partitions and merge them all together inside 1 partition on the destination
drive, effectively destroying the previously-separated (by using different
partition) data. Not nice. UNLESS the user wanted to consolidate all of
the 3 partitions.
or choose to clone individual partitons on the
source drive to this or that partition on the destination HDD.
3. Still another option the user will have with the Casper program is
creating a partition on the destination HDD only sufficient in size to
contain the *actual* data contents of a source drive's partition.
The actual data of all 3 partitions in the source? But why would someone
want to do that anyways, unless they were trying to merge the 3 partitions
into one, which sounds quite atypical.
Say the user desires to set up a partition on the destination HDD only
sufficient in size to hold the contents of his or her source HDD - in our
example presently 120 GB of data. No problem. That is easily done with a
click of the mouse. The resultant partition on the destination HDD will
then
be 120 GB; the remaining disk space on the destination HDD could then be
partitioned along whatever lines the user desires.
The next time the user clones the contents of his/her source HDD, let's
say
those contents now total 150 GB in size.
But that's being stored in 3 separate partitions, presumably for a reason.
Again, no problem. A new partition
of 150 GB will be created on the destination HDD to contain those cloned
contents. Naturally the previously created 120 GB partition will simply
disappear.
Again, I don't know why anyone would want to do that. Put them all into one
partition on the backup.
But assuming they could, somehow:
If they then wanted to restore that back to the source drive, by recloning
it all back to the source drive, how would Casper be able to know (or even
could it) what to put back in EACH of the 3 separate source drive
partitions?
Again, the only requirement is that the destination partition be
sufficient
in size to hold the cloned contents, be they the contents of a partition
or
the contents of a disk.
Anna
Right.