It looks like you missed Ken's other post where he said:

"Glad to hear you say that, and I hope you're right and I was wrong."

You seem to be confusing the terms image and clone.

An image is one gigantic archive file (or it can be a series of such
files) that contains the "essence" of the totality of what is on the
hard drive. You can store this archive anywhere you'd like: on an
external drive (but it would be non-bootable *in that state*) or on a
DVD (or several DVDs, depending on the size of the archive -- even with
compression, images can be quite large!)

You can use the same software that created the image to restore it back
to the same hard drive (or another hard drive in its place, say if the
first drive physically dies). Once the image is restored, the result is
a hard drive effectively identical to how it was when the image of it
was made. Therefore, it would be bootable.

If for some reason, you desire to make an exact copy of the hard drive
directly to another hard drive, this would be a clone. If this other
hard drive is in an external enclosure, unless it is eSATA, you would
need to remove it and place it in the correct slot in your desktop tower
(probably where the original one was). This drive would also be
bootable. It's like an identical twin.

Note that if you restore an image to a bare metal drive, the result is
the same: something that is effectively an identical twin.

Cloning is preferable if you do not want to take extra time to restore
the image. You can configure your motherboard's BIOS to boot off an
eSATA clone, even if it is not in the tower. With eSATA, the PC doesn't
distinguish between internal or external drives.

If you clone your drive to a drive that is in an external USB enclosure,
it will only boot if you physically remove it from the enclosure and
place it inside the tower. It will not boot from the external enclosure
if there is no eSATA connection (despite what WaIIy stated).


David wrote:
Ken:

Perhaps you just wanted to argue with yourself. I don't know. In any
case, I used the wrong term. Does a mistake like that constitute an
arguement?

The whole point that I tried to make is I want my external USB drive
to boot Win/XP PRO in case the main hard drive fails. I had thought
an image would require a second hard drive exactly the same. I am not
sufficiently well versed to know. In any case my main hard drive is
150GB and the USB drive is 1TB. The 150GB drive is listed in my
paperwork as serial-ATA. The 1TB USB drive is an IOMEGA eGO desktop
USB drive in its own case, type unknown.

Perhaps we could reinitiate this conversation in a more amiable
manner. I was hopeful you might have a solution to my real problem -
making the USB drive XP/PRO bootable.



On Tue, 11 May 2010 16:50:32 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:

On Tue, 11 May 2010 19:31:09 -0400, "Daave"
wrote:

The term "mirror" is used for RAID technology:


I tried to tell him that, but since he just wanted to argue with me,
I didn't bother replying to his second message, quoted below.




http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk/glossary/raid-1.htm

http://www.recoverdata.com/raidfaq.htm

This does not sound like what you were asking about.

From your description below, you are referring to cloning. Is your
external hard drive specifically an eSATA hard drive? Does your
motherboard support eSATA hard drives. If you answer yes to both,
then you can use a cloning program to accomplish what you want.

Also know you can create an image of your hard drive and then
restore that image to the same or a different hard drive and your
new drive is *effectively* a clone of the original. It takes
longer, but it still safeguards all your data and allows you the
luxury of not having to reinstall the OS, updates, applications,
etc.

Or you can choose to clone directly. Your choice.


David wrote:
Ken:

I do mean mirror, not copy.

Unless I am mistaken, when you copy one drive to another, you get
the contents of the first drive copied to the second. This means
that the contents are the same, but the location on the second
drive may not be the same.

Mirroring a drive (at least to me) means just that. Not only are
the contents copied, but the exact locations on the second drive
are the same. Mirroring, I believe, also copies the boot tracks
which is essential if the mirrored drive is to be used as a
replacement boot drive in the event c: fails.

I have an external USB hard drive. the bios on my workstation
allows the external USB drive to be bootable (assuming I read the
manual correctly). I want the c: drive to be mirrored to the
external USB hard drive so I have a functional backup hard drive
in case c: fails.

David

On Tue, 11 May 2010 08:04:26 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:

On Tue, 11 May 2010 05:18:18 -0400, David wrote:

I am looking for recommendations on the best backup program
available.

My workstation is currently running XP PRO/SP3, but may
eventually upgrade to Windows 7, so compatability with both is a
plus.

I would like the ability to mirror my main c: drive to a bootable
external drive.


What do you mean by "mirror." That term is normally used just for
RAID1, which is very different from backup.

But if you just mean something like "copy," no problem.


I would like to be able to backup an entire internal or external
drive to a different external drive.

I do not plan on backing up to DvDs or optical disk.

Being able to backup individual directories/files would be a
plus.

Compression is unimportant. My external drive is 1TB & I have
150 GB internal capacity. I'd prefer to have a plain vanilla
backup - that is I'd be able to use Windows Explorer to view the
backup & retrieve a file if I choose.

Quality, reliability, and ease of use take precedence over cost.
If I can not accomplish what I want with one program, multiple
programs are fine.


Acronis True Image.