WaIIy wrote:
On Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:57:52 -0700, "Bill in Co."
wrote:

Patrick Keenan wrote:
"WaIIy" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 17 Jan 2009 12:34:55 -0500, "Patrick Keenan"
wrote:


"John D99" wrote in message
m...
I've got Acronis True Image 9.

I want to backup my standalone's o/s to a diferent physical harddrive
on
the machine, with the priority being on simplicty and actually being
able
to re-install when the o/s goes bad, or won't boot, a year or two
from
now. The o/s is only about 7 gigs, and I've got lots of space, so
that's
not an issue.

I have looked over the Acronis material, and even used their online
chat
to ask about a straightforward way of doing it, without really coming
away
with anything I want to operate on.

Can anybody give me a few streps and some overview info on this?
Clone
versus image?

Cloning is for duplicating the disk, to another disk you have ready.
You
want an image, to store for later.

Why? You can do an updated clone in a few minutes and be bootable.

Because you can't always do that, the times you can't are the times you
really need to, and it can turn out that when you realize that you
can't,
you've also damaged what you had.

You create and store an image because you can only clone if the source
disk
is functioning, or can actually *be* cloned, and that is sometimes not
the
case. Disks can fail in ways that prevent either cloning or imaging
from
concluding successfully, though they can still function.

I've rebuilt a number of client systems recently that could not be
cloned
or
imaged due to disk read errors. I *could* scrape data off, so little
was
lost, but neither cloning or imaging was an option.

The errors appeared well into the process, and if I had been "updating"
a
clone, I would have had a drive that couldn't be cloned and a damaged
clone
that was no longer usable.

If I already had an image, and was restoring that to a drive because of
a
failure, no problem. I know that I have a working image because I was
able
to create it and restore it for testing.

Never rely one one single backup. It's cheaper to have several stored
images on one or two disks than several stored hard disks. Again, you
do
not want to have only one source and only one backup.

You want to have some sort of copy on hand of a base install, which
perhaps
you update regularly; but if it's a file that you store on another
drive,
it's an image. If it's to a separate drive, it's a clone.

Cloning and imaging are basically the same process. The difference is
the
target and immediacy of use.

Images are also often used for testing software configurations. It's
quick
to restore an image, and costs less than having a separate hard disk for
each install. Boot to the recovery CD, select the appropriate image,
restore.

If you are making a working copy of the hard disk to another physical
hard
disk each time, you are cloning. Often, cloning in this way is a
waste
of
space since multiple images can be stored on one disk, but cloning is
one-to-one.

Except for the case of multiple partition cloning to ONE destination
disk,
though.

I think it's a bit misleading to simply state that a clone is a copy of
the
entire hard disk, as it doesn't have to be that. It can (altenatively)
be
just a partition copy "clone" of a source drive partition, and not the
entire source drive (which could have several other partitions).

In Casper's case, a clone has to be a copy of the entire disk. You
can't "clone" partitions separately. AFAIK

I had thought Anna had said Casper COULD do that.

That would just be copying a partition.

Which again I think Anna had said Casper COULD do.

The clone copies the
active, bootable, operating system disk, including partitions.

But only as the most commonly used option, I believe.

In Casper's case, with a desktop shortcut in Windows. Too easy.
Again, the subsequent clones just take a few minutes.
In my case, six minutes.

For my purposes, I define a clone as a *bootable * copy of
the entire drive your operating system is on, including any
partitions. An exact copy of it. (Okay, maybe excluding swap file, etc)


So one could store several partition type clones on ONE destination
backup
disk, but they will each be assigned different drive letters in windows.
So
for example, if your C: partition on your main internal source drive
contains windows and all your programs, one *could* choose to make
multiple
"partition type clone" copies of that to the destination disk, for backup
purposes. Although I think it makes a lot more sense to use imaging for
this purpose.


I don't think you can make a bootable clone to a partition on the
destination disk. I admit I could be wrong about that.

For one thing, the partiton has to be active to be bootable and you
can only have one active partition on a disk AFAIK.

Well, maybe Anna can weigh in on this. I assume Casper has some way of
keeping the destination drive partition marked active and yet its not being
a problem, IF that drive is being used as the destination drive.