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Can I do this?

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Hi, I've just installed Acronis True Image 9.0. I'm running Windows XP. I have 2 identical SATA hard drives. All my system,programs and data is stored on the first drive. The second drive is brand new, formatted and totally empty. My wish is to clone this drive onto the second drive and regularly to repeat this process, so that if my main drive fails, I'll have a complete backup of operating system, programs and data on the new drive. I wish to leave both drives in place.
The reason I ask if this is O.K. is that in the instructions for cloning, it says that after cloning you must remove the original drive.

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My best advice: Do not Clone! Instead, do one extra step and create a full disk Backup to an external drive. If ever you need to return to that image state, you would do a full disk Restore/Recovery.

There is rarely a need to Clone. Really, Backup is safer and more flexible. Many users encounter problems Cloning which they would not have if they had instead used Backup.

1. Don't use Clone. Do a full disk mode Backup, selecting the entire disk, and a Restore. The end result will be the same as Clone, but with many advantages.

2. Check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left margin of this forum, particularly Getting Started and Grover's True Image Guides which are illustrated with step-by-step screenshots.

A full disk backup, selecting the disk checkbox rather than individual partitions, includes everything. It includes everything that a clone would include.

The difference is that while a clone immediately writes that information a single time to another drive, a backup is saved as a compressed .tib archive. As such, multiple .tib archives may be saved to a single backup drive, allowing for greater redundancy, security and flexibility.

Once a full disk image .tib archive is restored to a drive, the result is the same as if that drive had been the target of a clone done on the date and time that the backup archive was created.

Clone is riskier because we've seen situations where users mistakenly choose the wrong drive to clone from and to, thus wiping out their system drive.

Thanks for that; I'll follow your advice. Can you confirm that I can do the backup to another internal hard drive? In the case of a primary hard drive failure, would I boot from the original disk and then restore the backup?
Thanks, Chris.

Yes, you may backup to an internal drive. However, note that by backing up to an internal drive, all your eggs are in a single PC case. In case of fire, physical damage or theft, you'd have no backup. Backup to external HD has the benefit that the backup drive can be stored separate from the PC.

To restore disk or partitions, you should boot from the ATI bootable Rescue Media.