Cloning my C drive to a PARTITION on a larger disk? Impossible?

In TI parlance, cloning means making a copy of 1 drive onto another, and the operational word is "drive" not partition. You can't clone an individual partition or clone to an individual partition.

What you want to do is make an image of the C drive and then retore it to the desired partition on the other disk.

I have a new computer system.  ATI 2010.  I want to Backup my System.  When I follow the steps, I get to the part where NTFS (OS) C: is displayed.  What is being cloned here?  My Op Sys only.  Not My Documents, My Favs, or anything else?

Also, assuming this is Op Sys image only, and I click the button and store it on my external hard drive, do I then set the software to do this regularly?  How often?  And should I do the entire system.  I read something about Incremental and Differential.  Are there settings for these?  Which should I do?

Further, same assumption, should I then back up Files, Favs separately?  If I back up daily, should it be incrementally or differential.

This is new to me.  Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Merrell Vannier wrote:

I have a new computer system.  ATI 2010.  I want to Backup my System.  When I follow the steps, I get to the part where NTFS (OS) C: is displayed.  What is being cloned here?  My Op Sys only.  Not My Documents, My Favs, or anything else?

Also, assuming this is Op Sys image only, and I click the button and store it on my external hard drive, do I then set the software to do this regularly?  How often?  And should I do the entire system.  I read something about Incremental and Differential.  Are there settings for these?  Which should I do?

Further, same assumption, should I then back up Files, Favs separately?  If I back up daily, should it be incrementally or differential.

This is new to me.  Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

At the top of the forum there is a Sticky by GroverH which contains the answers to most of what you ask. It is also best to start a new topic for yourself so the answers are not mixed with answers for the original person.

Seekforever wrote: "In TI parlance, cloning means making a copy of 1 drive onto another, and the operational word is "drive" not partition. You can't clone an individual partition or clone to an individual partition. What you want to do is make an image of the C drive and then restore it to the desired partition on the other disk". Many thanks, SFE, for this, which partly answers my query.

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What I want, whether it is a "clone" or an "image" or an "ISO" or a simple "copy and paste", is to be able to transfer my C drive to a partition in a form which is directly bootable, by a procedure which is simple, though not necessarily directly catered for or envisaged by the creators of the program. I want it bootable (1) because this is the ONLY true test, in my view, of a backup, but also (2) so I can be up and running quickly if my C drive fails. I can do this already with my second HD, but as it was the same size as my C drive, I didn't encounter the problem I've made for myself in partitioning my third disk. As I said, it looks as if DDS might do it, but I don't want to commit to trying because I have data on disk 3 which I'm prepared to lose in a successful achievement of what I want to do, but would rather retain it otherwise! The terms "clone" "image" "ISO" and "copy" obviously have precise meanings, which I'm still not entirely clear on. Even "image" is ambiguous: the tib files that ATI creates are referred to as "images", but being in a proprietary format, can't be handled by any other software other than ATI - tib files are really only potential or encoded images!

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I do think I'm onto a logical and thoroughly viable alternative to conventional backup protocols, one which might give ACRONIS the opportunity to create a new product! I suspect most of the programing is already done: just a matter of repackaging bits from ATI, DDS, and Migrate Easy!