Macrium Reflect question - what's the difference between image & clone

Macrium Reflect question - what's the difference between image & clone

I have been using Macrium Reflect for backing up my system - using the IMAGING option. But I was curious, if you IMAGE the entire drive, isn't that essentially the same as CLONING? What is the difference if this is not the case?

Cloning usually means copying the contents of a partition ( or several partitions) directly to another storage device.

e.g. get a bigger or faster disk, clone the old disk to it. Then boot up the new disk.

Could be described as a direct copy:

source > target

Imaging usually means copying the contents of a partition ( or several partitions ) to an image file. Typically the image file can later be restored either to the source location to fix a damaged os , or to a new disk.

Could be described as indirect copy:

source > image file > target

Ah thank you. So the "image" is used when you are putting the same info back on the same partitioned disk? Is that correct?

yes

Both clones and images are similar, but they operate at a rather different level logically.

A clone is pretty much a bit-by-bit copy of a chunk of data without any regard for its structure. It just copies the whole partition as-is without looking at it and creates an exact duplicate. It's most often used to move whole systems to a new hard disk.

An image is similar, but somewhat more inteligent process that takes into account the file system and its state. It copies the whole partition as well but it uses the file system information to copy only actual files and not the whole data, for example omiting unused space and without replicating symlinks and junctions.

Neither is a proper backup solution, although it can be used as such in some limited situations.

I am using the clone to move my entire drive 240 gig to a larger 500 gig one.

I have cloned my OS and, as expedited the cloned disk was the same size as the OS disk (352 GB free of the 930 GB). Because there is no option for differential backups I created a Image of the OS. However, I was really surprised that the image of the OS was 3 times larger (32gb free of 930gb) than the clone. I read the image disk should be smaller. This issue I have now is that that I am in the Red in size on my 1T drive, and I cannot make differential backups on that disk now. Is it normal for the image file be larger than the files the image was made from? If I format the disk drive that put the image on and create a new image, will the image be smaller?

I would just clone the OS again, but it takes a really long time to make a clone of my OS. I hoped the differential backups would save the time it took to clone and have a good back up in the event my OS disk fails.