Cloning Vs Imaging Questions

I know cloning a drive will in essence replicate it, but I have a question about imaging your OS and data partitions.

If you image the OS and data partitions and restore them on a target drive......
will the target drive be able to boot Windows or just contain OS related files

If its not able to boot up your laptop will using a rescue disk to boot up from allow you to operate your pc

 

that's how it works with apple computers ( and one major reason i prefer macs )
clone the drive with the operating system to another drive [ internal or external ] and you can boot from that cloned drive.
one does not image drives on macs. apples have always had a boot manager to take care of this.

with windows, you might be able to boot from the cloned/imaged drive, as long as you have a boot manager that could see the cloned drive and know how to get to it. someone with more knowledge could probably supply a proper answer, rather than my generalities. with windows, it's just more difficult to boot and use a computer in the way that you are thinking. i'm sure someone out there does that, and i'm rather sure that it is not for the faint of heart.

good luck with it.

 

In the case of MBR disks both restored images and clones will boot to the new drive providing, in the case of imaging, that the Active partition was included in the image. Sometimes the Active partition is separate from the system partition and sometime the boot files are in the system partition. I will leave others to answer the question where the disks are the later GPT disks as there may be small differences that would have a bearing on your question. I have restored literally dozens of Windows system images without issues, it isn't in any way difficult.

 

I usually consider cloning when you care copying one drive to another that is similar to replace the current drive. Imaging is when you make a file (or files) that contain the data of your system for backup or recovery. If you image the entire drive (all partitions), yes, it will be bootable when you put that image back on a drive.

 

Whatever backup you decide on, I have my Windows installed in two ways, on different hard drives - MBR, AND GPT-- The MBR was simply to enable me to install Windows 7, 8.1, and W10 on the same drive, (W7 can prove difficult in GPT mode) whereas GPT, is used to install W10,with Virtual Machines for all the others, so that I can experiment (Although I have VM'S installed in the triple boot systems, as I do some trial versions on them,( like Linux, Zorin, and even trying hackingtosh(nearly made that last time I tried)
Quite frankly, I prefer cloning my main drive, and saving any files that I put on afterwards , on the disk I am using to USB, and external hard drives (in enclosures)
Updating is , I find, not a great problem. (only 3 months)
Hard drives are cheap enough, and a major crash on my computer would only stop me for as long as it takes to change the hard drive to the clone.
I probably change it over every 3- 4 months. I do keep a copy of my clean setup with most devices installed on at least two hard drives, though.
I find them easy for restoration, and I keep other hard drives with copies of program installation exe's, pictures,and files separately.
Mind you, as I have a laptop, the enclosures are small and easy to store.
I think generally imaging can be a life saver for most.