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Creating a backup OS drive

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I have the WD edition of True Image.

I would like to make a copy of my 128 ssd, which has my OS on it, onto a spare 256 ssd I happen to have come into, so that if anything were to happen to the 128, I could plug in the 256 and keep going as if nothing happened.

Do I clone the OS drive, or what? I'm sure this is a basic question, but I'm not sure what the most effective and safest method is for doing this.

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Cloning will produce an exact copy of your current drive which can be perform proportionally to fit on the larger drive. Since you are not relying on this to be a backup solution then a clone would work just fine. You should follow cloning instructions dependent on the type of machine you are using to the letter and the clone utility should only be run from the boot media to lessen the chance of corruption during the process. I strongly recommend that you perform a full disk backup of your current system and test that backup to be recoverable so that if the clone procedure fails you will have something to fall back on.

Thank you for your help.

Perhaps it would be easier just to backup my OS drive, then recover it on the other ssd, essentially making a clone that way?

If I clone a smaller drive onto a bigger drive, will I lose the extra space on the bigger drive?

And if my current OS is on the "C" drive, do I have to figure out a way that the cloned drive is also labeled "C"?

John Farrin wrote:

Thank you for your help.

Perhaps it would be easier just to backup my OS drive, then recover it on the other ssd, essentially making a clone that way?

Easier, because you can do it from the computer running WIndows, and more convenient, because you can store multiple images on a disk, whereas you can produce only one clone version with the cloning operation.

If I clone a smaller drive onto a bigger drive, will I lose the extra space on the bigger drive?

No. When you clone (always start the cloning or restore operation from the recovery CD, not from Windows), you can choose whether the operation is automatic (ATI will scale the partitions appropriately), or manual (you decide).

And if my current OS is on the "C" drive, do I have to figure out a way that the cloned drive is also labeled "C"?

When you restore or when you clone a whole disk, ATI takes care of putting the right info at the right place on the target disk. What is important here is to NOT reboot the system with both the old disk and the new restored/cloned disk in the system at the same time. After you have successfully rebooted the computer on the new disk, you will be able to put the older disk in the system if you wish to do so.