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Cloning or mirror images into partitions on backup disk???

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I asked this question earlier but this is a much simplified form of it:

1) Can I "clone" or "mirror image" ( onto one partitioned target 1TB external backup drive) two different source Vista computers hard disks (which have two partitions each)?

2) In either case, if cloning is possible or if I need to do imaging into these target partitions, if one source disk is a half full 500 GB hdd, how much partition space will I need for a single backup on the target disk?

Much obliged in advance,

Ray Gonda

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At least the way ATI uses the terms, cloning is taking the image one hdisk and putting it on another hdisk -- the target will be jsut like the source -- it's a one shot operation.

INstead you can do a backup of partitions/drives doing all of the partitions on a disk at once or doing them in seperate backups.These backups are each stored in a file with a tib extension in its name. You can store as many backups (*.tib files) on a disk as will fit.

You can restore a backup file to the original or a diff location andyou can resotre with resizing is you want you target to end up a diff size than the original (this assumes your target has enough space to make the new partition). When restoring, the atarget partition need b only large enough for allthe used bytes in the source image (backup) to fit -- allowing, of course, if it's a system drive the space for overhead like temporary files, the restore files, etc that windows makes -- inthe case of Vista and W7, these can be as much as 100% the size of the original system files -- so a system disk that starts out with 10 GB used might end up with 20 GB used, the longer you use the drive, so be careful about allowing enough space when doing a downsizing restore of a system partition/drive.

Thanks Scott,

Will take this up in late October when I return from Alaska.