Windows 7: Best free cloning software to protect against disaster

I have owned Acronis for years but with every update it gets less reliable.



I just installed Macrium free edition and went to clone my primary drive (C, OS,) and it warned that the target drive would lose all data on it. Is that really necessary? Wipe the drive before copying over to it.
I dont mean to trash Macrium it seems like a great piece of free software but erasing all the data from my target drive wont work for me.

I need a program that will produce an exact copy that I can access if disaster should strike, I dont need incremental or differential backups, I dont need individual folder backups, I dont need anything but a dependable program that will clone my complete drive. I like that Acronis will do this with an existing drive without disturbing the data on the drive and I also like that I dont need rescue media with it, on startup I just press an F key and it automatically boots into the program. Its just become unreliable.

Is there a better alternative?
I'd even pay for this peace of mind.

Couple of alternatives that may be suitable:

AOMEI Data Backuper ? free disk imaging and cloning software, backup and recovery for your computer.

Best free backup software. Hard drive backup and recovery, image and clone freeware - EaseUS Todo Backup Free

Free Disk Copy, Drive Clone, Disk Image freeware - EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition.

Clonezilla live

Paragon Drive Copy - Professional Hard Disk Copy, Disk Cloning and System Migration - deploy new hard drive easily! (free version also available but unknown if it supports cloning)

Drive Image and Hard Disk Backup Software

That is what "cloning" does. In Macrium you want to "image" your drive and save the image to be used later to restore your system. You can do the whole drive or individual partitions.

Jim

Paragon free version:
Solved How to Migrate OS to new Hard disk.

It's hard to beat your initial choice of free Macrium Reflect. You can also use Windows inbuilt imaging as an additional safeguard if you wish.
You may be giving "cloning" too much credit.

If you restored your image to say a brand new HDD of the same or greater size you would end up with a fully functional system (OS, programs, data etc) just like if you cloned.
Cloning is just a bit by bit/ sector by sector copy. Cloning would copy everything which you don't really need like pagefile contents etc. Cloning requires the physical disc to copy to now and that is why Macrium gave the message it did.
Using imaging you need no preparation for even a new HDD if your current one dies, just physically connect it (by itself) and run the image restore process. If your current HDD just screws up then do an image restore back to it.
Typically you'd store multiple images on an external HDD representing snapshots of your HDD say a week ago, a month ago etc. Then pick the one you want.

Agreed. Do you happen to have 2010 still? If so, go back to it. Its rock solid and reliable.

If you want to get away from Acronis all together then as mentioned, Macrium is a fine product.
Ive also used the free version of Paragon and it worked well too.

being used to ATI, both of these will seem to have limited functionality compared to ATI, but they are free and have all the basics that most will need.
And they do offer paid versions with more features as well should you decide you need/want them.

Id either stick with ATI 2010, or go to Macrium. Ive had lots of issues with newer Acronis products myself sadly

Use macrium reflect free option image.
Or use macrium reflect option clone. Wiping destination disk isn't neccesary at all!! just create enough free space by shrinking partitions already on destination disk.

Use image for backups!!

As I said before I'd steer away from cloning unless you want to make a new HDD now. Imaging isn't just "a backup". It is a special form of backup which allows you to fully recover your system to the existing HDD or a new one. This is a more efficient and flexible approach to save you from disaster.

you don't want to CLONE your hard drive...you want to take an IMAGE of your hard drive.

Cloning means 1 hard drive directly to another hard drive.
Image means backup 1 hard drive to an image file stored on another hard drive.

You typically clone when say you move from an 80GB SSD to a 240GB SSD. By cloning it's a 1 pass process. You "Can" accomplish the same task by imaging, it's just 2 steps (1st step is take the image, 2nd step is restore the image).

Hope that helps.