To Clone or not to Clone ...

OK ... granted I've never used this program but I'm getting ready to. Here's my problem:

I am getting ready to completely restore my laptop to it's original state due to major problems from Sony's upgrades (long story). Before I do this I want to a exact duplicate of my hard drive on an external hard drive. So I can have the the existing operation system and all files just like it exists before I restore.

NOW my question ... do I Clone the drive ... or use one of the other options? What is the best way to accomplish my goal?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

What Acronis product name and build number do you have? Do you have a CD-R/RW drive (this is used to create a bootable Rescue Media CD)? Review the Users' Guide for differences between Backup and Cloning. I believe the Backup option might be best here.

 

True Image Home 9.0 ... I do have a burner. I read the owner's manual description. My first impression was that cloning would be the correct process. My thoughts were to attach my USB external hard drive and clone the existing hard drive to it. Wouldn't that make an exact copy? That in theory you could install a cloned hard drive in the pc and it would operate? Am I off base here?

 

If the cloning function of ATI offers the option of how to deploy the backup. As a bootable drive or a storage device. I'd pick bootable drive. But be advised once the cloning operation is completed. Disconnect the external HDD. In the event you want to clone back the external HDD to the internal HDD. The external HDD must be bootable. To transfer the bootable function back to your internal HDD.

 

So if I understand (sorry it's Monday on Acid today) ... if I select a storage device ... it is just a complete copy of the hard drive but not bootable. If I select bootable then I just need to insure it's not connected during start-up. Am I correct?

 

Correct. But if you want to clone back from external to internal. You will of course have to connect the external HDD. Then it might get sticky. Different HDD react differently to being set to master/slave/cs when another bootable HDD is present. You'll have to play around with settings. Actually I don't know if jumper setting applies to laptops but it does to desktops. Which is my experience.

 

Hello Ralloh,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that there are two approaches available:

Clone Disk - transfers the entire contents of one disk drive to another;

Backup - creates a special archive file for backup and disaster recovery purposes;

Actually, Clone Disk approach is usually used to upgrade the hard drive (e.g. install a larger disk), while Backup approach is basically dedicated for the complete data backup and disaster recovery purposes. Since you are interested in backing up your hard drive for the disaster recovery purposes, I would recommend you to follow Backup approach.

Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches in more detail.

I believe that you are going to restore you computer to its original state using Sony utility. And you would like to have "exact duplicate" just in case the restoration process failed. In this case I would recommend that you use Backup approach: create the image of the entire hard drive and store it to your external hard drive. Later you will be able to restore the whole system or separate files/folders from this image using Acronis True Image 9.0 Home.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov