I guess you do what you are comfortable with. I have never bothered with cloning. There may be 2 operations with imaging but it is faster in the end and every image can restore your existing HDD or restore to a new HDD straight out of box.
Actually, cloning is significantly faster, far simpler, and doesn't require a third drive (or extra space on the original drive, something that isn't always available), especially when transferring to a single drive. Transferring to multiple drives might be faster with imaging.
I disagree totally. Cloning is a drive to drive bit copy. This is very inflexible and copies lots of unwanted rubbish (eg page file). Imaging is faster There may be 2 operations with imaging but it is faster, particulary when using USB3, esata or even an additional internal sata drive and every image can restore your existing HDD or restore to a new HDD straight out of box. It allows
multiple images to be stored on a cheap external USB HDD. Typically people would still only need 2 HDDs. Their internal HDD/SSD and an external. When your internal fails stick a new one in and you are up and running.
Honey, I've both cloned and imaged from my notebook, and, believe me, when moving everything from one HDD to another, cloning is one heck of a lot faster. In this case, I'm getting ready to replace the HDD in my notebook with a SSHD. If I were to image the original HDD, I would have to put the image on a third drive first, then I would have to "restore" the image to the SSHD. That means more or less babysitting the process so I can initiate each step. If I just clone the HDD to the SSHD, all I have to do is start it, walk away while it does it does its thing, then I can just swap drives. Also, I don't have USB 3.0 or e-SATA on my notebook.
Now, when making backups, imaging is faster and allows restoring data to the original drive without having to physically swap drives, especially when one is referring to the OS and program. I image my C:/ drive on my desktop so I can easily restore it if it goes pear shaped. However, I clone the one data drive I have in use so far so, if the data drive should die and need replacing, I can plug the cloned backup drive into the hot swap bay on my computer and keep chugging along until I get and install a replacement drive, then just clone the backup drive to the replacement drive. While making an image would be faster, especially if I was making incremental images, in this case, cloning is far more convenient in the long run. And I don't really care how long the clone takes to make since I just start it and walk away, skip to the loo, watch a movie, go to bed, whatever, until it's done.
On the notebook, the only thing I will ever need to actually backup is the C:/ partition and one folder and that folder will need backing up only when I'm on the road and have photos to put in it until I get home. The C;/ partition gets imaged. It's simpler and faster to just copy files downloaded from the camera card to a backup HDD I carry with me when on the road, a 32GB camera card I keep in my purse, and to my Amazon Cloud Drive. These backups are temporary until I transfer the files to my desktop where its backups will take over. Any other files on the notebook (books, music, emergency data) are static and also on the desktop so are already backed up. If any get lost while on the road, I will also have a copy on the HDD I use for on the road backups and, push come to shove, I can download them from the Carbonite backing up my desktop.
When I start putting videos on their own data drives, I'm not even going to bother with imaging or cloning. Since, once the video file is on the HDD, it'll never be changed, moved, etc. it will be easier and faster to just save each new file to the internal data drive and each of the backup drives.
