Newbie recovery strategy

My plan is to add a new disk to my current computer and create a partition on it for either a back-up volume or a clone of my current C: partition with operating system programs etc.

What is the preferred method for quick easy system recovery?

When I make this partition on the new disk does it matter which drive letter it gets? I suspect I can tell the computer which disk to boot from in set up in case the current C: volume goes down.

Lastly, If I make another large partition on this new disk, can I use that partition just like any other even though it is sharing the same disk as my back-up or clone of my current C: partition?

Thanks in advance for any replys;
Mike

 

Hello menelfloss,

Cloning is a one-time procedure meant to transfer the contents of your present system drive to a larger one.

For day to day protection, imaging is the proper technique. You will install the second drive as you normally would, it's letter being of no consequence to TI. You will be able to store on it any other files along with TI image files. The latter are just common data files, only written in .tib (True Image Backup) format. You can acces them with Win Explorer to copy, move or delete, like any other file. For greater flexibility, I would not partition the second drive, I would keep the TI image files separate from other files by use of folders.

This way, you would be creating images of your system drive storing the resulting image files to the second drive. If Windows crashes, you get infected or you want to get rid of the application you have been testing, without any garbage being left behind, you run TI (booting from the Rescue CD if Windows is down), select the (last or some previous) image file from the second drive and restore in to the system drive.

 

Thank you, BVolk..
Sounds almost too good to be true.
My system doesn't change all that often but I will make sure to update the image archive from time to time.

Best,
Mike in Minneapolis