Sector by Sector image VS Clone Disk

Hi everyone,

i need to make an EXACT copy of the disk to another one. The two hard disks are identical.

I can make a Sector by Sector image with TI but then, i will need a third hdd to old the image and then restore it to the other drive.

So my question is, what does Clone Disk exactly? is it a sector by sector live copy to the other hdd or only the contents files?

What should i do?

thanks for the info!

 

Clone is what you want. It is intended for replacing an old disk with a new one and copies everything over including the MBR and everything on the disk.

Some report better luck using the TI boot CD to do the clone rather than doing it in Windows although it shouldn't matter. Be sure you disconnect the old drive immediately after cloning and don't reboot until it is disconnected. Since the new disk is an exact clone with partition signatures etc, it can confuse Windows on bootup. After the first successful boot is done the old one can be reconnected if you wish.

 

thanks for the info. So this is a Sector by Sector copy on the new hard drive! In fact, this is not an ntfs or fat32 disk. This is an hard drive from my DVR. He have is own type that no one can read. This is why i need a sector by sector copy.

so... do you always think its the best idea to use the Clone Disk?

 

That is another wrinkle. Have you searched for info on cloning/replacing the drives on your DVR system? I don't know much about it but from what I've read a lot of people find it impossible to do disk upgrades themselves.

When TI does an image of a supported file system it copies the in-use sectors only. When it doesn't understand the file system it copies all of the sectors; there used to be no manual control over this until version 11 which allows the sector-by-sector image to be created by command. I would assume that this means a restore will put all the sectors back from the location they came from since TI doesn't know anything about the system so has no other option. This does not necessarily happen when a supported file system is encountered - TI does not always put the sector from location abcd back into location abcd.

My feeling is that the cloning would do the same as sector-by-sector but I don't know for sure.

If it were my disk, I would investigate via Google or whatever any info on doing this on the particular machine. If it sounds feasible then I would try the clone first since it seems to be the easiest for your setup. If that didn't work then I'd try the sector-by-sector imaging.

 

I do not know if TI can produce a duplicate DVR hard drive. As such beasties usually have their own unique file systems I would guess that since TI would not recognise it sector by sector would be the method to try. However no guarantee that it would work!

It would be worth seeking out a news group either specific to your particular brand of DVR or a more general one such as
http://www.radioandtelly.co.uk/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?board=recorders
You might even find a tech guy at the manufacturer who could help out. A slim chance I know.

If you do have success please post back here as I will want to replace and consolidate some PVR drives myself and have yet to get round to it.

Xpilot

 

You guys are correct - most DVR disks cannot be successfully cloned using imaging software, according to the DVR user forums.

If you are upgrading a disk in a TiVo box you could check this site. They have software available that will successfully copy an existing TiVo disk to a new, larger hard disk. BTW, it does indeed work as advertised.