Beginner Needs Help

Hi,

I just purchased TI9 Build 2302 and am totally new to disk cloning. I'm using Windows XP Home Edition.

I have a 160 GB external drive and am trying to clone my PC's master drive, which is 80 GB. First I did a backup of some key files to the external drive - about 500 MB. When I then tried to clone the master, TI9 advised that the external drive contained partitions and that to continue I would have to erase the existing partitions. I did not create multiple partitions so TI9 is, evidently, referring to the single, 160 GB partition.

Does this mean that I can only have the cloned disk on my external drive? Or should I have created multiple partitions so that the backup data would be on one and the other would be clean for the clone?

Thanks,


Wayne

 

From what I've been experiencing, in the Clone feature, TI wants to remove ALL existing partitions (and any data on them) on the "new" drive before it will procede with cloning. I've also found that when there is a large difference in size between the original and the "new" drive, the Clone feature does not work well. It may or it may not.

If your intention is to have a backup in case the 80 gig goes bad, then I suggest that you do an Image backup instead and keep that image on the 160 gig, along with any other data you want to store there.

But if you want to replace the 80 with the 160 then either Clone the 160 - and you will lose any data you had on it before cloning, OR get a third drive to store an image of the 80, replace the 80 with the 160 and Restore the image to the 160. Of course you will have to use the Bootable TI CD to do this. If you go with the Clone, be sure to test it ASAP, when you still have your original intact.

Personally, I have found the Image to be the better way to go. It does require a few extra steps, but is more reliable for me than Cloning.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I'm somewhat confused by this, however. Following is my thinking:

If I have to clone to a similarly sized disk and that's all that can be on it, then why do I need a recovery CD? In the event of a failure, wouldn't I replace the failed hard drive with the clone and turn the machine on - shouldn't it boot up and operate as though nothing has occurred?

My assumption, evidently incorrect, was that cloning the master provided a safe mirror image of the entire system that could be mapped to a new hard drive in the event of a failure, or to the existing hard drive if I had to reformat it for some reason (e.g., virus). In that case, I would use the boot CD and the external clone to map the system onto the new drive.

In the first situation, howewver, I have to create a new clone on a new drive since I've used my clone as the new master. In the second situation, my clone remains intact. It also seemed to me that I should be able to create multiple clones on a single external drive (I have 3 PCs) to simplify my emergency recovery setup housekeeping.

If I can simply use a backup program to copy my existing master and reestablish an intact system after a failure, what value does the cloning process provide? For that matter, I can use Windows' free backup utility to copy my existing files so why would I use TI9 (which I can't use for large backups as it hangs up - I'm researching the posts on the upgrades that are supposed to resolve that issue, but that's another day). Obviously, I'm missing something here, but I haven't been able to make much sense out of the TI9 Help function, or the FAQs. If you, or anyone else, has any insight, I would very much appreciate it.

Thanks,


Wayne

 

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For files and other data, yes, Windows will do that nicely and even compress them for you. But for recovering in case of a catastrophic failure of your hard drive, then the imaging/clone provided by TI will let you recover more easily.
Hope that clarifies things a bit.

 

Thanks for the assistance. I think I've got it.


Wayne