New
#380
With ref. to clone, I see no disks to choose to do the clone on.
I have a DVD disk in the tray.
Why can't I see this ?.
With ref. to clone, I see no disks to choose to do the clone on.
I have a DVD disk in the tray.
Why can't I see this ?.
Cloning is done from one hard drive to another. If you do not have a second hard drive, you have no destination.
A DVD drive won't do.
Cloning and imaging are 2 different things, typically done for entirely different reasons.
An external drive will do it ?.
What is the difference ?
Cloning creates an exact copy of a partition or drive on another drive.
Imaging creates a file that contains the contents of a partition or drive so that you can restore it either to the original drive or to a new one.
Cloning is normally used when everything is OK with your PC and you just want to move to a new hard drive--usually a larger hard drive. It is not used to recover from a disaster or failed hard drive. Cloning does not make an image file.
Imaging is normally used to recover from a disaster such as a failed hard drive or badly corrupted system. You make the image before the disaster and hope you never have to use it. Imaging can also be used to move from one hard drive to another when there is no disaster, just like cloning.
With imaging, you must restore the image to the new drive. Cloning is a transfer and does not have a "restore" process.
What are you trying to do?
You can store an image on an external, but you would not clone to an external.
Iganzatsonic Now I stand to be corrected in any way but I do clone to drives (SATA or IDE) that are external to the machine using a small USB (hook up) gadget and it makes a perfect replica of the drive in the machine or any other drive that is hooked up to the machine.
My tester I did this afternoon using a SSD and HDD both installed on the same machine and just cloned from the HDD to the SSD using EaseUS to do. But I could have just even done that with the SSD outside of the machine using the gadget.
The only problem is one cannot clone from large to small only same size to same size or small to larger with EaseUS . That is what I did - an 80GB HDD to a 120GB M4 and then just use the SSD as the boot drive. The old HDD can just be wiped cleaned whatever and used for the data.
The gadget I also use if / when the optical goes bye byes and you can install software from the external optical drive (SATA or IDE) to your machine - or burn data to disks from your machine using / via the USB gadget that is attached to the external optical.
I have a heap of recycled opticals (SATA & IDE) I use whenever I get caught out with a dud Optical in the machine.
The gadget is very cheap and simple to use and I would be lost without it to be honest. When in use the machine just "sees" the external HDD / SSD or optical as another plug in drive. Sort of like a huge stick I suppose in the case of an HDD / SSD. Of course you can also do diskparting and partitioning for examples of the outside device just as you would one installed inside the machine using the gadget.
I agree. You can do this with Macrium as well. I cloned a failing data drive to a new one via a USB link. If I remember correctly you can also re-size the partitions with Macrium.
ICit2lol:
I'm sure you are right.
I should have been clearer.
My point was meant to be that cloning is normally used to replace an internal OS drive with another internal OS drive, as when you run out of space on an existing OS drive.
As opposed to using an external to "store" an image file of some type.
I think the term cloning is defined in different ways by some. I think most would agree that it is a bit by bit / sector by sector straight copy.
It may be that cloning can be seen as a simpler way to make a duplicate HDD. For me, I see no purpose in it over imaging. Imaging is more flexible and efficient. Every system image you have can be transferred to an existing or new HDD.