cloning vs. imaging

Okay, I have a newbie quesiton....getting ready to download Acronis....just purchased a 120 gig external drive....I have been looking on this forum....I see references to cloning and to imaging.....what is the difference? Thanks.

 

just search google for "cloning vs imaging"

you would have found, for example, this page:
http://www.thejournal.com/thefocus/10.cfm

Normal backups are usually done on a file-by-file basis to a removable media such as tape. Backup done on a file-by-file basis is called "cloning." While this term is not normally applied to tape backups, you can see that a tape backup is essentially a clone, albeit one that is not readily accessible. Each file on the system being backed up is copied to another system or directly to media such as tape, a CD-R or DVD-R. Depending on the software, the clone can be compressed or uncompressed. Backup done sector by sector from the system's hard disk is called "imaging." In this case the file boundaries are totally ignored, it simply copies the drive byte by byte to another drive or media. With cloning you can typically specify some portion of the hard disk (certain folders and files) to backup. With imaging this is not the case, because the drive (or partition) is totally copied. This means incremental backups, where files that have changed from the last full backup, can be copied. Such incremental changes are not normally supported in imaging.

 

thank you!

 

Hi smoberly,

Apart from reading the User's Guide before you get stuck into cloning or imaging to your new HD, have a read of this thread titled <How can I restore to larger partitions using TI8?>.

Regards

 

Hello smoberly,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Besides the links given to you above I can recommend that you read the following question in our FAQ
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/faq.html#9c

Briefly, when you create an image you obtain a file (or several files) that contain the information concerning you disk or partition. You may store this file on any media such as HDD, CD, DVD, Iomega REV drives etc.

When you clone your hard disk you should clone it only to another hard disk and you obtain the copy of your old drive rather than a single file. This option is usually used to transfer system from a smaller disk to a larger one.

I also would recommend you to read the User's Guide before you perform any actions.

If you have any further questions please feel free to aks them either in this forum or via e-mail support@acronis.com.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman