Best free cloning software to protect against disaster

[rocks911]

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.

 

[marsmimar]

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

 

[Phone Man]

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.

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

 

[theog]

Couple of alternatives that may be suitable:

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)

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

 

[mjf]

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

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.

 

[AddRAM]

 

[Wishmaster]

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

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

 

[Kaktussoft]

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.

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!!

 

[mjf]

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.

 

[pparks1]

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.

 

[mcleod55]

Let me ask this... I did a Windows 7 clean install about a week ago including all windows updates. Since then I've decided to switch from my 500 gb sata HDD to a 120gb SDD. Do I need to clone OR image?

 

[Mark Phelps]

Do I need to clone OR image?

If (1) you mean to "clone" the 500GB HDD to the 120GB SSD, obviously, you can not do that because the destination drive is too small.

If (2) you mean to make an image of the 500GB HDD and then restore that to the 120GB SSD, once again, you can't because the destination drive is too small.

You would first need to move files around to shrink the partition(s) on the 500GB that you want to migrate to the SSD to be small enough for them to fit in 120GB.

Then, I would recommend imaging and restoring -- as that is how I migrated my setup from HDD to SSD.

 

[whs]

Let me ask this... I did a Windows 7 clean install about a week ago including all windows updates. Since then I've decided to switch from my 500 gb sata HDD to a 120gb SDD. Do I need to clone OR image?

Easiest would be to use the Paragon Migration Tool. It does the job in 3 clicks (for $19.95 lifetime license).

For free, see my little tutorial:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/149969-ssd-install-transfer-operating-system.html

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Do I need to clone OR image?

...If (2) you mean to make an image of the 500GB HDD and then restore that to the 120GB SSD, once again, you can't because the destination drive is too small...

Actually, it depends on how much of the 500GB HDD has data, etc. on it. If you have less than the formatted size of the 120GB SSD (minus around 20-25%) on the 500GD HDD, the you can use Macrium Reflect to image it and restore the image to the 120GB SSD. Reflect has an option called Intelligent Sector Copy that will image only sectors with data on them. As long as the restored image will be less than the amount of space available on the destination (or target) drive, you will be able to restore the image to the destination drive.

I'm not the OP (Original Poster) understands the difference between cloning and imaging. Cloning creates an exact copy of the source HDD on the target (destination) drive. Because the process is creating an exact duplicate, it will destroy whatever data is on the target drive. Cloning is useful for creating exact duplicates of drives without any intermediate steps. A clone is useable as is. Normally, cloning can not be used to duplicate single partition on a drive; only the entire drive can be cloned. Also, the target drive needs to be the same size as the source drive.

Imaging is more like film photography. An image is like a photo negative. Like a photo negative, an image contains all the data that was on the source drive but cannot be directly used without something to interpret the image. However, one uses restoration software to create an exact copy of the source from the image (often, that software can be used to view and even extract some of that data from the image). The process is a bit more complex than cloning but has several advantages. An image can be compressed, meaning it will take up less room than the data on the source and destination drives, handy especially if storing multiple images. Individual partitions can be imaged and restored. As long as the actual data being transferred is less than the formatted size of the target drive, many, if not most, imaging programs can be used to transfer data from a larger drive to a smaller one.

I suggest the OP read this tutorial on using Macrium Reflect.

 

[mjf]

This knowledge base from Macrium Reflect might help
v5: How to restore a backup image (Restore, v5)
Look particularly at the "Drag and Drop" description.
Free Macrium Reflect

The Paragon migrate tool mentioned above provides a very simple turnkey solution but knowing about Macrium more generally is worthwhile.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx