Cloning an internal HD - Dell XPS 8700 Desktop - Windows 7 Pro
A little assitance please....
I want to create a clone of my internal HD (non-partitioned, 500MB of 1TB used) for catastrophic recovery purposes. Even though the data files may be a little dated - I can restore more current versions which are being backed up in another location)
I was going to create a USB Recovery 'Disk' and create the clone on a new external 1TB WS Passport.
My chat session with Tech Support said I can't do that and can only clone the hard drive to another internal hard drive - not use an external HD.
Is that true?

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Alternatively, instead of cloning the disk - take a full disk image of your main hard drive (the entire disk and all partitions) and save the backup .TIBS to your external hard drive. You can then restore that backup to any disk (any bootable disk - such as a replacement hard drive or SSD upgrade down the road, or in the event that you just need to recover your system and/or files at some point). This can have advantages too as you can navigate the backup in Windows Explorer and still copy files/folders out of it if you need to. You can also restore the backup image to basically any disk that has enough room on it. The .TIB backups can also be compressed to save space and can be saved to external media like your Passport. I actually prefer taking full system images over cloning from one disk to another because you can have multiple full image .TIB backups saved on a single disk and just restore the image you need when you need it. Or, instead of doing a full backup each time, you can just do incrementals after your first full backup for as long as your comfortable and you can restore you computer to that point in time. Creating incrementals along the way will keep your data more up to date as well and will be a lot more of a time saver than cloning your hard disk each time you want to make a backup.
Both options are a good idea though - so pick whichever one suits your needs best. As FtrPilot mentioned, you can clone to your external drived, but you'll never be able to boot off of it unless you reclone it to another internal drive. If using your WD passport is your goal, then the full system image (not a clone - but ultimately provides the same recovery ability), is the way to go.
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