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Difference between "Entire PC Backup" and "Clone Disk Utility"

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Just did my first backup, as a "Entire PC Backup"  and see that the result is an image.

I would then have to expand that image to get an exact copy of what I started with.

 

 

What I want:

I really just want to have Acronis make a clone of my computer onto another hard drive whih I will store in a closet.   But if in the future I should have a disaster I can just take that hard drive and put it into the computer and run. No images, no second steps, just pure simplicity.

 

Question:

Will the "Clone Disk Utility" give me what I want, see above, or will it give me an image that needs more steps before I can just take that hard drive out of the closet and put into the computer and run?

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Pat, Acronis can do both of the things you are asking about and there are benefits for each of these.

When you create backup images these can be stored in various different place, on a second partition locally, on an external drive, a network drive or in cloud storage - the advantage being that you can create multiple such images as changes occur so that when you use the image to restore from, you will be as up to date as the image was when created.

When you create a clone of your drive, then this will be a mirror image of what you have on the day that the clone is created but any further changes you make to the source drive will have to be made again should you choose to install the clone in your system in the future.

Obviously, with clone you can repeat the process multiple times as major changes occur and have an easy method of recovering your system fairly quickly.

With backup images you can also recover the system fairly quickly but as you noted, there are additional steps that are needed, including ensuring that you have built and tested the recovery media necessary to allow the image to be recovered. 

Patdereo,

Steve is spot on.  I would like to add a few other thoughts as well.

Cloning is not always possible - especially if using a different type or size of hard drive to clone to.  Even same size hard drives may fail to clonse if the default sector size of the new drive is different from the soruce.  Also, if there are bad/dirty sectors on the original drive or the destination drive, cloning is more likely to fail.

***The big one**** If your primary/main hard drive is already corrupt/bad - cloning provides no real benefit as you would just be pushing the bad data to your new drive.  Cloning is really intended to fully functional and working disks, when the intention is to replace the existing drive with something else

I personally do not use cloning.  It has it's benefits and can simplify the process of swapping from one working drive to another (for instance if moving to a larger drive or replacing a spinning drive with an SSD) .  But, as it offers no kind of backup protection or retention (none at all), that's about where its usefulness ends. 

Instead, I would always recommend first taking a full disk image and saving that to another hard drive (an external USB or spare disk).  That way, no matter what happens to your current hard drive (failure, corruption, virus, missing data, etc), you can then push that previously saved image back over the existing drive, or onto a replacment/spare (which I would also recommend doing so as to preserve any data on the existing drive that may have been created after your last backup image was saved).  

Even if I was to use the Clone feature, I would still recommend taking a full disk image and saving it somewhere else safe - just in case.  

Please take a look at the d

FAQ about backup, recovery and cloning

Disk cloning utility

Clone Disk wizard