Cloning vs Imaging backups

I've tried both cloning and imaging software for full backups and prefer cloning. I like to have an immediately bootable backup that I can just hook up as the master/boot drive and be up and running again without needing to go through the extra step of copying from a proprietary backup format to restore/setup a usable boot drive. Both my old version of Norton Ghost (2003 version) and the current trial version of Acronis True Image Home I've been using recently (version 9) allow either cloning or proprietary drive imaging. But both suggest that drive imaging is the preferred backup solution while cloning should be used only when migrating to a new boot drive.

I'm interested in hearing reasons why cloning your boot drive isn't as good a backup solution as using a proprietary "imaging" approach. It seems to me that simpler is better and needing to go through the extra step of restoring from a proprietary image leaves open more possibilties for something to go wrong (as well as taking longer before being up and running again).

Furthermore, if my backup drive isn't bootable (because the backup is a proprietary image, not a clone) in the event my boot drive fails, I have to immediately purchase another hard drive to restore the drive image to before I'm up and running again. But a clone backup hard drive can be hooked up as the new master immediately in a pinch. (But, of course, purchasing a new hard drive so I can clone-backup my boot drive once again would be a high priority anyway.)

I'm running WinXP Home with SP2 and using two identical 200GB Maxtor ATA/IDE drives (with four partitions -- OS and closely related stuff, "serious apps", games, and a data partition). The backup drive that I clone my boot drive to is installed in an external USB case that I keep powered down unless I'm cloning to it. (To keep it safe from virus/spyware/malware infections.)

So weigh in and let me hear the pros and cons of cloning vs proprietary imaging as backup solutions.

 

This should be a good discussion.

To restore a TruImage Image all you need is a bootable TruImage disk. Acronis give you a utility to build the CD with their software and works perfectly. You can also resore individual files using TruImage from an image. Good feature.

Cloning - One drawback that I see is that the cloned image can only be used on the exact machine it was cloned from. Why clone at all when you could mirror with the basic windows software. Mirroring will give you the same effect without doing anything special.....when one of the drives dies...simply switch to the mirrored copy.

Imaging - This too can be only used on the exact same hardware it was built from. Several images can be taken and stored to give you different points in time where cloning has to write over the old clone with the new cloned image and previous images are lost.

-Jim

 

It depends on the situation. For my laptop, I'd rather carry around a few DVDs as backup while a cloned drive might be a good idea for my home PC. They all have their advantages.

 

Where do I find "the basic windows software" you refer to that allows mirroring? Is that what "dynamic" disks are? A mirrored set of drives? And does that mean it's essentially a software implemented RAID setup (either RAID 0 or 1 -- forget which is which)?

Please tell me more and, if you can, also speak to the question of whether I'm correct that somewhere I've read that if you convert your drives to a dynamic setup you can't convert back to plain vanilla NTFS. Or are dynamic disks and mirroring two entirely unrelated things?

Being able to have multiple sets of backups when using proprietary imaging had occured to me as one advantage over cloning. Especially given that the Acronis TI software can create a supplementary (not their word for it, but can't recall it just now -- not incremental either...the "other one" ) backup that includes just the files changed since the last full backup.

And I know Acronis TI has gotten high marks for being very reliable and easy to restore/create a bootable drive from its imaging backups. But I do really like having a "instant" bootable backup and wonder if there are any worrisome issues associated with cloning that I haven't heard of or thought about. And I'm interested in hearing other reasons for and against both imaging and cloning backups so I can mull it all over.

Another question I meant to include in my first post... How does the SID figure into cloning? Can having a cloned drive with the same SID cause a problem if, for example, I boot up to the drive just to test it and make sure it will really boot without a problem? (I wouldn't do this often and have, in fact, only done it once and then I just unplugged my original master boot drive and plugged in my backup after removing it from the USB external case.)

Oh, and a couple more questions -- Is it true that WinXP will not, no way and no how, boot from an external USB drive, even if your BIOS supports USB devices? I know an external SATA drive can be bootable. What about an external firewire drive?

Thanks for replying Jim and for any additional info you can provide clarifying exactly how you can use Windows software for mirroring drives. I look forward to hearing more people weigh in too and hope it turns out to be an interesting and informative discussion also.

 

Mirroring or RAID-1 is available in Windows 2000 and Windows XP Professional. You can read about the specifics here
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314343

Booting XP from USB hard drive - there are people that claim that they have done it and this link http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176 describes how you do it. I have not done it myself....but maybe will try it when I get some time. Don't really see a need beings I use BART PE to boot XP from CD which seems to be more useful in my case.

-Jim

 

Oh...one other thing.

I would expect that a hardware raid controller would allow RAID-1 and others regardless of the particular XP or 2000 operating system. If you consider that all of the RAID functionality would be performed in the hardware and the OS would not even be configured for it or otherwise even know about it. The hardware RAID would control which hard drive the boot will take place from.

-Jim

 

Thanks for responding again Jim. As I mentioned in my first post in this thread, I'm using WinXP Home with SP2 and I don't think it includes any RAID software. I do have RAID hardware on my ASUS motherboard but only if I'm using the SATA HD controllers I think. (Currently I'm not using SATA as both my drives are ATA/IDE.) At any rate, while I've read about various RAID configurations I don't expect to get into that stuff anytime soon. But interesting to know that software RAID is available in XP Prof.

I looked at the link about making a USB drive bootable with WinXP and it looks like a lot of work. Like you, I won't be trying that soon but it looks interesting and I may give it a shot somewhere down the line. But more likely, before I do that, I'll buy a SATA drive or two which, I think, will boot XP even hooked up as an external drive (because I think the SATA external hookup really just plugs into a "passthrough" connector on the back of the machine which in turn plugs into the SATA controller on the motherboard and, therefore, appears to be an internal drive to the OS.

Thanks again for the information Jim.

Thanks also to Just Playin for responding. Sure, a few DVD's make a lot more sense for a traveling laptop than toting around an external hard drive..

I hope at least a few more people will weigh in on this discussion. Will check in again over the next few days to see.

 

Thanks again for your thoughts all. Guess no one else has anything to say on this compelling topic! *L*

 

Ok, I'll throw my useless opinion in, too. On another thread similar to this, I suggested DrvImagerXP and DrvClonerXP by LexunFreeware for these two uses. Either program takes under five minutes to do its job on reboot, and neither has ever failed me in four years of use.

I use imaging for a total backup copy of the OS, and cloning for a backup of data. However, as I said in the other thread, the best method to "backup" data isn't a backup at all; it's storing the data on a separate drive in a mounted volume. The odds of losing the second drive are equal to losing the OS drive (or obviously an offboard drive), which would toast the data anyhow if stored on the root drive. If paranoia over losing the data HD really nags your sleep, then an offboard "hard" copy such as a rewritable disc is the only sensible way to go. But that will take longer to write than to image or clone, and you will get NO warning when the disc finally becomes unreadable due to re-use. So I guess we should just print everything out and store the paper copies somewhere- but then the house would burn down and we'd have nothing left but ashes.
I suppose we could chisel them in stone, but a volcano might erupt and cover everything in lava.
But seriously, loss of data is just another risk to be evaluated that is ultimately inescapable, and these are the tools and methods that I use which reduce the risk to the level that is acceptable for me...

 

Thanks for the recommendation of those backup utilities, The Prisoner. I'll check them out later today.

And I'm not overly concerned about my data -- little if anything on my drives that's genuinely critical. Just like to take reasonable precautions and thought it would be interesting to hear what people at Major Geeks might have to say, especially as I have the opinion that, for reasons I don't quite fully grasp, full "cloned" bootable backups seem to be in disrepute.

Thanks for the info!