Cloning sons pc... help please ?

Greetings all. I am very new and inexperienced in backup and recovery. I want to clone the drive in my son's pc in case of catastrophic failure. I d/l Backup and Recovery Free 10.2 to do this. I have been going through the manual but see no option for cloning. I assume what I need to do is a full backup (image)?

My goal is a follows:

Create an image (full backup) on an external USB drive
Restore that image to a new hard drive
Keep that Hard drive safe until needed.
Install the new drive if/when needed and boot into a fully operational system.

Will the restored image on a new drive be fully bootable and identical to the original?

Is this correct? Will this sequence do what I hope? If someone could post the steps to accomplish this, I would be extremely grateful.

My apologies for all the questions. I sincerely appreciate any help I can get on this.

Thanks, Frank

 

Anyone

 

create a full image backup and store it on an external drive. Only install on a new drive in case the old one fails, otherwise no need (unless you need to test that the restore works). The full image will be the exact replica of the old drive, its clone. All the same including being bootable.

 

Thanks so much....

Just to make sure I understand, the image itself is not bootable, it is the RESTORED image that will be the clone. Is that right?

Thanks again!!

 

Yes, the that image is just a file(s). Only when it is restored does it become the exact copy of the original

 

Thank you. You've been a great help.

 

I would like to add that since this is the drive with the system partition, I would double check to see if the bootable rescue CD that you create from within the program will work on the computer you are backing up and also see all of your drives. In order to restore a system disk that is not bootable, you will need the rescue CD.

 

The restored image may be functionally identical to the original, but it is not a "clone" of the disk, because the sectors that do not contain information are not copied, and the positions of sectors in the restored drive may be different to the original positions. Also, the restored image may or not be bootable, as noted.

There is a free EASEUS program that can make a real clone of a disk.

 

A restored image will be bootable if the original was.

It is the rescue cd you need to check - see if it boots up fine and recognizes everything.