is "clone disk" the correct way to do this

[acein1]

i just want to copy my entire "disk c" (no partitions) to disk D,(again no partitions. is it ok to just use "disk clone",will this allow me to "restore",my c disk if anything goes wrong,is it realy this simple "or am i simple.??? thanks

[napoleon]

I've never used Disk Clone, but I assume that unless you want to make your D: drive the active partition (that is, you no longer want to boot from C:), you should just image it onto D: instead. Are you just looking to backup C: in case it ever fails or you need files from it? If so, take an image.

[acein1]

thanks ,yes i just want to backup my "c drive",once a week and have a complete copy on my d drive in case of a h/d fail .will that be ok ??

[napoleon]

Yes, definitly do an image then. A clone is great, for example, if you install a second hard drive and want to use that as your primary C: drive. An image is used to "backup" a drive or drives so you can recover from a hardware or software failure, or recover just certain files. Good luck!

[napoleon]

Bear in mind, though, that if the hard drive fails and your image is on the hard drive, you may not be able to retrieve it. You can get around this by imaging your C: drive onto another physical drive in the same computer, a shared folder on a networked computer, or by imaging directly to CD or DVD.

[acein1]

sorry, im still confused with "image" and "clone" can i explain please.
i have 2 internal hardrives drive 1 and drive 2.(no partitions on either)all i want to do is copy drive 1 to drive 2. complete once a week.
so that both drives are identical. i have used "disk clone " to do this it only takes 20 minutes and is verry easy to do. when i look in "windows explorer"
i can see the 2 drives and they look exactly the same so i assume that it has worked ok. all i need to know is."if drive 1 failed tomorrow, and i had a new one fitted" could i use my "cloned copy" on drive 2 to restore onto the new drive. sorry if im a bit slow but i would appreciate a simple yes or no .

i realy am not being rude ,there may be better ways to do what i want to do but this way is verry easy and straight forward for a novice,and i do appreciate your help,if you dont think im doing it right or my way wont work then i will look at the other suggestions about "imaging" thanks ever so much for your help regards mike

[MiniMax]

So - you have disk #1 which Windows displays as C: ?

And disk #2 which is a copy of disk #1 ?

And disk #2 shows as drive D: in Windows ?

If that is the case, then the answer is yes. If disk #1 goes KA-BOOM! then you can clone back from disk #2 to your new disk #1 and everything should be back to normal.

[acein1]

minimax ,many thanks for clearing that op for me regards to all for your help mike

[Acronis Support]

Hello acein1,

Thank you for choosing Acronis System Transferring and Disk Clone Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Though everything should work properly you can make sure by trying to boot from the second disk you have with the first one plugged and with the first one unplugged. In both cases the computer should boot normally (of course, you will see only one disk when the other one is unplugged).

However, as napoleon mentioned cloning is not conventional backup strategy. This option is mainly designed to move your system, for example, when you upgrade to a larger drive. Image creation is much better for your purposes and it can be scheduled so that you will get new image automatically.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "sorry, im still confused with "image" and "clone" can i explain please.
i have 2 internal hardrives drive 1 and drive 2.(no partitions on either)all i want to do is copy drive 1 to drive 2. complete once a week.
so that both drives are identical. i have used "disk clone " to do this it only takes 20 minutes and is verry easy to do. when i look in "windows explorer"
i can see the 2 drives and they look exactly the same so i assume that it has worked ok. all i need to know is."if drive 1 failed tomorrow, and i had a new one fitted" could i use my "cloned copy" on drive 2 to restore onto the new drive. sorry if im a bit slow but i would appreciate a simple yes or no ." }-Hi Mike,

The reason not to do what you are suggesting is that it's very inefficient. You can only make one clone on the second drive. If you image Drive 1 to Drive 2, you can store several images. This is far better as a backup strategy.

Cloning is for replacing a drive with the cloned drive. Imaging is for backing up a drive so that the image can be restored to the same or a replacement drive. What you have said you want to do is best done by imaging.