A few months ago I inquired about xxClone. A member replied they'd used a similar application with success. It is free, and makes a bootable clone of your C drive. If you have a free drive or partition (that doesn't have a boot option already active in its drive) you should give it a whorl. A few things: On my system it didn't successfully install the bootable files at the end of the cloning. It does mention that if it doesn't, you just need to use its "Cool Tools." I also had to add its "Test" file (also in Cool Tools) for it to show up and boot from the boot menu. It did boot and work perfectly! The full clone of my 120GB SSD C: (only using 30+GBs though) to a target SSD took 11 minutes. I haven't tried its incremental feature. It's available here or from most of the freeware sites, e.g. MajorGeeks!
Just had a look at their website, and this software is certainly not for me... First and most important: This is a FILE BASED cloning application with the additional ability to make the target drive bootable. It is NOT image based (i.e. sector based). So if you think you can clone to an external HDD and then Windows will boot from this external drive, think again. This is not possible. It has to be an internal drive. No disaster recovery. You need to reinstall Windows first to make restores. The free version does not support incremental backups nor does it support compression. Due to the file based nature of the software a restored system is never identical to the source. Some software might refuse to start after a restore, other software might require to be reactivated or to obtain a new licence from the vendor. Read their FAQ... Cheers manolito
My target is internal! I already own and use AX64, Paragon and Macrium Reflect. This is just ANOTHER TOOL and indeed, with the exception of an AX snapshot, very convenient in that it boots from the boot menu as opposed from boot media. Of course MR can too. My wife had to work today so I figured I'd finally try it. I did notice that Norton A-V did not activate but I opened my other backup programs and ran CCleaner while in the cloned environment. I have no idea if I'll ever need or use it, or have I inventoried what applications are functional and what aren't but it certainly is not hurting anything nor my only option.
xxclone has been around a long time. I discovered it at the same time that I discovered Casper which is similar in some ways and which I use now. Here is a the faq from the xxclone page. In the xxclone faq they make a distinction between a 'backup' and a 'clone'.
For me, xxclone "saved the day" after shutdown of a Ubuntu Live CD "left a dirty bit/flag set" (or somesuch), thereby ruining my WinXP software RAID volume. xxclone offers to spoof/copy the drive serial# and the partition GUID to the target, and I learned that neglecting to do so would break (UNactivate, de-authorize) certain GUID-keyed proprietary apps... including Kai Power Tools (3rd party Adobe Photoshop plugins). With, and without GUID spoofing (and source drive uncabled prior to booting cloned drive) xxclone failed to boot Win7 for me. My repeated attempts led to Windows install CD }} Repair }} "cannot complete the repair due to missing files". I'm not searching for a solution (to the xxclone failure), just mentioning this anecdotally -- in case someone else encounters same, you're not alone. Within the discussions of various imaging / cloning / backup tools here (and at various vendor support forums), I surprised that I haven't found much discussion regarding the hassles from GUID-locked DRM.
