What's in an image?

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by AaLF, Jan 27, 2012.

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  1. AaLF

    AaLF Registered Member

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    Regarding imaging software such as Drive Snapshot & Acronis Migrate Easy. When these types of programs take a snapshot of the drive and then when I rstore that image to a drive what carries over?

    Let's say the operating system and folders etc "on the surface" go over to the new drive but what about those old 'deleted' files that you can 'recover' with software? Or even those files you think you securely erased, do they get transfered to the new or re-formatted drive too?
     
  2. AlexC

    AlexC Registered Member

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    I'm not sure but i think that an image won't preserve that old deleted files, but a clone of the HD (using Norton Ghost for instance) will preserve them.
     
  3. napoleon1815

    napoleon1815 Registered Member

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    If you do a sector-by-sector image, it should carry over even deleted files.
     
  4. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    As I understand it, a normal image only includes sectors that have "active" information. Deleted files are in "non-active" sectors and won´t be preserved in the image.

    If an image is created as "sector-by-sector" or "raw", it will include all sectors, and deleted files will be preserved.
     
  5. andyman35

    andyman35 Registered Member

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    That's my understanding too.

    A "normal" image is often compressed and void of any superfluous data,whereas a raw image copies the lot.
     
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