My comments are inline below...

On Wed, 21 May 2014 21:24:49 -0500, BillW50 wrote:

In ,
Gene E. Bloch typed:
On Wed, 21 May 2014 19:49:46 -0500, BillW50 wrote:

Sorry about the double spacing in the previous post, reposted.

In ,
Gene E. Bloch typed:
On Wed, 21 May 2014 19:07:14 -0500, BillW50 wrote:

In ,
Gene E. Bloch typed:
On Wed, 21 May 2014 16:36:27 -0500, BillW50 wrote:

In ,
Char Jackson typed:
On Wed, 21 May 2014 03:49:34 -0400, AlDrake
wrote:

So in the long run none of these backup applications are even
worth the money, time and trouble I guess. But that all part of
who I am. I have shelves of toys I never use after unwrapping
them.

When you clone your drive(s), you need an additional drive for
every drive you wish to clone, or simply an additional drive for
every clone you wish to make. For many people, that gets
expensive. When you create a backup, you can typically put
multiple backups on a single drive.

Actually it should be cheaper the first time around. As a backup
drive will hold more than one backup I assume (otherwise you
might as well clone). So it has to be larger than the original
drive and that costs more. Sure the three drives you clone you
might be breaking even vs. a one backup drive.

Images are smaller than the whole drive. They are even smaller
than the used portion of the drive, if as is typical you use
compression.

SNIP since I have no further comments.

True, but even if you take a 120GB drive and backup to an external
and say you get a 60GB saved compressed backup. Which is probably
very typical. Now how do you know you can restore? Are you going to
test it? Or are you going to hope it works? If you test it, are you
going to use the original drive? If so and it fails to boot, now
what? Bad idea eh? So you really need a spare drive to test it,
don't you? So if you need a spare drive to test, you could have
saved lots of time, money and trouble just cloning to the spare
drive anyway.

Obviously you could test dozens of different images on one and the
same spare drive, if all you're doing is making sure they are in
fact restorable.

You only need to devote a drive to a single image if you are in fact
restoring the image to that drive because the original drive is
defunct. But that's the way it would be under any plan, no?

Yes absolutely! Although are you going to test every single backup?
If so, that is twice the work than cloning. If you test less, well
then it is less work for sure. You still have the problem that you
are trusting one backup drive to stay working and not ever
corrupting anything. For me, that is a big if!

Where did I say that there will be only one drive for the backups?
What I said was that imaging allows backups from several drives to
exist on a single drive. If you get three backups on one drive, you'd
only need two drives to duplicate three backups. If you cloned, you'd
need six.

I always duplicate my backups...just not often enough.

All of the examples up to now were assuming one backup drive vs.
cloning. Adding multiple backup drives changes everything. And one of
the only disadvantage of cloning is it could end of costing more. Now
adding more reliability for backup/restore method by adding more cost by
backing up backups... what are you gaining?

I didn't say backing up backups, I said making multiple backups - it
never occurred to me to back up a backup. I back up the *original* drive
multiple times. OK, usually twice, and usually a clone on one drive and
an incremental image on another.

If you are trading cost for
reliability, why use backup/restore? Because that is the only negative
of cloning (sometimes). And that one is a bit iffy, as cloning is
cheaper to start off with. But you have to spend more later. Although
spending later, you pay less for more anyway.

Why do you say cloning is cheaper? Makes no sense to me. It can cost a
whole drive, whereas images only need a partial drive.

And everyone who suggests testing suggests testing every backup
anyway.

Wow, I hated that part. That is twice the work. In my experience,
cloning and backing up takes about the same amount of time. Ok, not
always true, some software is slower than others. But generally they are
very close. Although the heavier the compression for backup, the longer
it takes. But they can take generally the same amount of time if the
compression isn't that heavy. So up to this point, the time is about the
same.

Confession time: I believe that it is important to test backups. I don;t
do it, however :-)

See, we sometimes *do* agree!

Cloning all you have to do is to drop the new cloned drive and you are
done (unless it failed). Using backup/restore you are done if you don't
test. That is ok if you want to risk it. I've been burned enough that I
want to test it. Now the time you spent to backup, you now have to spend
on restoring. Twice the time! Worse it isn't like you can set it up and
go to bed. No you have to have to start restore manually half way
through the process.

You forget that a clone can also fail. Also, I might want to replace the
failed hard drive by a new one and restore it from the clone, or if I do
replace the failed drive by the clone, I will *definitely* want to back
the clone up. Immediately.

Also, a clone needs to be tested too. Even a supposed exact copy could
end up being inexact.

Oh yes, absolutely! I clone and use the clone and save the original (you
were using it and you know that one works). If the clone fails, you
would know right away if it doesn't boot. And you will be using it until
the next clone. So you have time to make sure everything works ok.

There are computers where you can't replace the hard drive unless you
own an axe. That setup breaks most schemes :-(

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)