Use of Migrate Easy 7.0
Hi, I bought the software so I could keep a cloned hard drive as a spare for my computer in the event it crashed. Have tested it and the software works like a charm.
If I want to keep the cloned spare drive updated (say weekly) do I need to re-clone it or can I do a backup to the same spare drive (incremental or otherwise) to keep it up to date ? It has to be a reliable method or it defeats my purpose of a second standby drive. What software do I use to achieve it - can I upgrade to one of the other Acronis products ?
Thanks, Paul

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Thanks Colin. Just to be clear : if I have a cloned disk on the shelf in the event of my computer having an HD failure and that disk was cloned say a week ago; I now want to update that cloned disk so it reflects my current computer status - you are saying that TIH allows me to do an incremental backup to that cloned drive so that if my computer HD failed tomorrow morning I could swap HDs and have the status of today's computer ?
Thanks, Paul
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Paul Rousseau wrote:TIH allows me to do an incremental backup to that cloned drive so that if my computer HD failed tomorrow morning I could swap HDs and have the status of today's computer ?
Not quite Paul.
Purely being pedantic, but it can cause confusion later on if you have problems.
To make incremental or differential backups, you need to make in your case a full disk image, the incrementals or differentials. This is not the same as a clone in Acronis speak.
Currently you are making clones - whole disk drive is copied sector by sector to new drive.
With TIH you would need to make an image of used sectors which are held in a container file - much like a zip file contains other files. To this type of file you can make incrementals which will result in a master full tib file and then subsequent additional files. These would need to be recovered (unzipped if you like) to a new disk. You could also not bother with incrementals and just make a series of full images.
Now this obviously has the inconvenience of requiring an extra step before you could be up and going again. In theory with TI 2011 and using an OS such as Vista or W7 you could store your images as VHD files and have these boot directly- however I've never managed to get this to work.
If you wish to stay with cloning, then you will for redundancies sake need an extra drive to rotate as you make your updated clones, so if there is a problem you can always return to the last known working version. The advantage with a clone is that you can test it immediately to see if there is a problem assuming you have a hot swap drive caddy.
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