bootable cloning

vlsi99xx said:

kado897 said:

This is very true. You might also have mentioned that with imaging you can have as many images as your backup disk will hold.

I agree, I think cloning and imaging could be part of your overall backup strategy. You could have a clone of your sys drive and several images versions.

For data, it is more of a grey area as you need a lot space for it and you may also want incremental images copies as well.

Victor: Casper looks to be a high-priced cloning tool for encrypted hard drives.

For $50 is a high price compare to free but it is within the range of most paid products.


thanks for all the feedback

I disagree on imaging data partitions. I think a File and Folder backup is preferable. The one I use is FreeFileSync which allows you to create a mirror with versions so you only have to do a full backup the first time. FreeFileSync | Free Security & Utilities software downloads at SourceForge.net. I made a video of it if you are interested. Backup With FreeFileSync - YouTube

Thanks
1. No my total data is about 500GB.
2. No that is something you will have to to as a manual exercise from time to time. It only creates a version if there are any changes to the folder pair.
3. No it uses VSS like Windows backup to freeze the state.
4. There is a log created with each run showing exactly what happened.
5. It depends on a number of factors like any file copy. The type of disk and the file sizes being the main determinants. I use a USB attached backup drive and most of my data is also on a USB attached drive so I have the worst of all situations. Obviously the initial backup took some time but I spread the pain around by by gradually adding folder pairs over a week. Now that it is all set up I have created a task to run the job daily and that usually takes less than a minute to run. Today it backed up 42 files, 1.0GB of data in 1 minute 21 seconds.

In terms of immediately bootable then:
1) A clone requires a new HDD at the time of cloning. Therefore, immediately bootable in that sense.
2) An image + reimage to a new HDD is bootable. The reimaged HDD is immediately bootable. This is how I create a cold immediately bootable standby. I see no reason to clone.
3) Given you can store many images on an external HDD then reimaging a more recent image to a spare HDD is a better option IMO provided you have ~45 minutes to spare.

ignatzatsonic said:

vlsi99xx said:

mjf said:

In terms of immediately bootable then:
1) A clone requires a new HDD at the time of cloning. Therefore, immediately bootable in that sense.
2) An image + reimage to a new HDD is bootable. The reimaged HDD is immediately bootable. This is how I create a cold immediately bootable standby. I see no reason to clone.
3) Given you can store many images on an external HDD then reimaging a more recent image to a spare HDD is a better option IMO provided you have ~45 minutes to spare.

Hi:

Can you explain what an image plus reimage means?
I thought an imaged HDD is in format that need a recovery CD to uncompressed the data into the new or same HDD. The cloning is basically a mirror copy of the HDD sector by sector in a format that you can browse with a file viewer with identical file structure as the original and therefore immediately bootable.

How do you create this image reimage setup? Can you do it with WINDOWS backup?

thanks

I think MJF simply means make an image file and restore it.

"Image" means make the image file.

"Reimage" means restore it.

Correct but I don't use the term "Restore" because a Windows "System Restore" is actually different and uses Restore Points and is not a (system) reimage. Maybe I shouldn't be lazy and say "system image recovery".