Clone vs. Image - Create & Restore

I'm currently running TI 8.0 build 937. I do a clone from my internal SATA HD to an external USB 2.0 HD (PATA interface). My goal is to create an identical image on the external drive, such that should my internal HD experience a non-recoverable issue, I can restore my drive's state from the external.

Am I doing this right, by using the cloning feature in TI? I've yet to need to do a restore, so my other question is will I be able to clone from my external USB drive to an internal SATA HD via booting from the TI Recovery CD?

Or, am I better off doing a full image from the internal to the external HD?

TIA,

Jeff

 

You normally would do an image and not a clone for backup. A clone is made for transfer to a new hard drive.

...Allen

 

Allen, thanks for the reply. As far as you know is there is any difference in the scenario where I'd want to transfer the contents of a "backed up" drive to a new drive, between cloning and imaging, as is relates to restoring?

My goal w/ TI is to have a "back up" drive that basically mirrors (as current as the last run of TI) my internal HD. Then, in the unlikely (but probable) event that my internal drive suffers a misfortune, I can boot from the TI boot CD and restore from the other drive (in this case a PATA drive in an external USB 2.0 enclosure).

Given all that, would you image or clone?

Jeff

 

I'm not one of the TI guru's but have used the product since v.6.

My opinion, as I've never cloned a drive using TI, is that if you clone a drive, you will need to remove the newly cloned drive from the computer after you clone it, as it is an 'active' hard drive. You can't have two active system hard drives (or partitions) running, unless you dual boot your system. An image is just a file on another hard drive...in your case your external hard drive. If you image your complete hard drive (All boxes checked if you have partitions) to your external hard drive and need to restore it to the same hard drive or to a new hard drive, you would then boot from the recovery CD and restore that way. It would be exactly like the hard drive you have now...so you could say it *is* a clone of your present hard drive.

Hope I explained it correctly.

...Allen

 

If you cloned your internal drive, there will be no need to go through the hazzle of restoring the image - you simply swap hard disks, as the clone will be fully working.

I've successfully done that under TI8 when I needed a larger HDD for my notebook: put the new drive into an external enclosure, cloned the system to it, then swapped HDDs and put the old drive into the external enclosure (so I have an identical backup, just in case).

Only additional step necessary was to extent the partition to use the full disk, as described in this article: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/38362/38362.html?Ad=1

Cheers: Othmar

 

Your exactly correct. Only problem Jeff_H would have, is he is using an external hard drive which I presume is not in a removable enclosure. So he couldn't follow your procedure, unless he wanted to always be booting from the external USB hard drive, which I doubt he would.

...Allen

 

Allen L., thank you for the clarification.

Not necessarily a disagreement - my intention was to describe the 'intended usage' of disk cloning, rather than specifically suggesting what Jeff_H should do, so, hopefully, he is able to decide what fits his personal situation best.

Cheers: Othmar