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Cloning to external hard drive

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I'm confused by the help information in the TI program itself. Can I make a clone of my existing hard drive to the external drive I used to make backups?

The external drive has multiple partitions, each holding different backup sets. If I delete all of the information on one of the partitions, can I use it as the source for cloning?

The TI program help seems to say that if I try this, the the cloning utility will automatically destroy all information on all partitions of the external drive before it writes the clone to that drive. Is this true? Is the only way to perform a clone to do on a clean external hard drive that has no partitions?

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The clone tool is a bit for bit copy of an entire disk. It is not possible to clone an entire existing disk to partition on another disk.

Thanks Enchantech. Was hoping I was reading the TI Help wrong. Glad I asked about it before attempting.

Remember that a disk and partition backup + restore is the same as a clone. Some times users don't make a difference between clones, images, and file backups. Disk and partition backups in Acronis True Image, are disk images packaged in a TIB file, just like VHD, etc.

Followup question, slightly different -- I've got an old laptop hard drive that I want to turn into a mobile external clone (to store off site) of the existing hard drive in my laptop. If I make sure there are no partitions on the old drive, can I clone the existing drive to it via USB?

Is there a way to wipe that old drive to prep it to recieve the clone other than reformatting -- which takes way too long? For ex, can I just delete all the content on the drive? Any other suggestions?

Many Thanks
AP

Followup question, slightly different -- I've got an old laptop hard drive that I want to turn into a mobile external clone (to store off site) of the existing hard drive in my laptop. If I make sure there are no partitions on the old drive, can I clone the existing drive to it via USB?

Is there a way to wipe that old drive to prep it to recieve the clone other than reformatting -- which takes way too long? For ex, can I just delete all the content on the drive?

I do have Acronis disk director and it allows you to delete a volume. If I delete all the volumes on the external drive, will that effectively make it into a blank drive that can accept the clone from my existing laptop?

Any other suggestions?

Many Thanks
AP