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can taking a back up damage a drive

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Hi,

If I take a hard drive which is the main C: from a computer (Win7) and put it on a spare Sata port off the master machine(another main machine) and complete a full disk and partitions copy to image file (to a storage drive).

Will the mount and copy off the source drive mark the orginal drive with any sector writes, or is it purely a copy from source with no write at time of copy.

 

So, during a true image 2016/ 2017 full disk to image file creation is the source drive writen too at all. IE: you take the drive put it into your main Engineering machine running own OS, slave the drive, and copy the drive to image off another slaved (storage).

Will the source to be copied drive be marked or have any sectors writen to? (potentially damaging the source drive).

I guess this would be the same as saying if you pulled a main C drive from a computer, threw it into an external USB 2 / 3 external hard drive caddy and disk and paritions to image, would it get writen there also.

Can you fully disk and paritions copy to a file with out chaing any sectors on the source to be copied drive.

I kind of guess the answer is going to be no and no way would any copy operation make any sector or boot sectors file change, that would defeat the whole purpose of the software.

Any one know for sure?

 

 

 

0 Users found this helpful

Mark, welcome to these user forums.

The simple answer is no, making a backup of a drive does not and should not cause any data to be written to the source drive BUT this does not mean that the drive may not be altered by the action of connecting it your other computer.

If you take the drive from computer A and connect it via a spare SATA connector to computer B, then it is possible that the OS will create a System Volume Information folder structure (for creating Restore Points) and a Recycle Bin folder (to hold deleted files).

If you want to be 100% sure that making a backup of the source disk drive does not result in any changes to that drive, then I would recommend using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media to create the backup image.  Using the Rescue Media takes the backup completely offline from your main Windows OS, and the backup can be performed on the source computer without the need to remove the drive providing the Rescue Media will boot correctly and recognise the drive and you have an external disk drive or other network drive to store the backup image on.

ok i see, cool ill just give her (borrow) my external cd-rw drive and she can use her external usb drive saving me the hasle. 

thanks