Cloning for Backup
Dear Friends,
I just formatted and reinstalled Windows XP with SP 3 on my Hewlett-packard dv4000 laptop, bought in 2005, and now want to back up its hard-drive as it now is so that, if/when needed, I can reformat it and install a copy of the hard-drive as it now exists and has been cloned to my external hard-drive.
The question is how to do it without error.
As I understand it at present, I can clone (image?) the laptop hard-drive to an external hard-drive and have that cloned copy available to install on the laptop hard-drive in the future if it give me too many problems.
The question then is a) whether that can be done as I've described it, and b) what the step-by-step process would be. My fear is that I may make an error in one or another step in the process.
Any help from those familiar with what I have in mind? I have True Image 10.
Regards,
John P. Owens
click on signature link 1 below and review index item 3-YY assuming your are asking about the old version 10 and not asking about version 2010.
Dear Friends,
Thanks for the info, but unless I missed something, the cloning instructions given seem to involve a change of laptop hard-drives, cloning an original drive to a new, replacement drive.
What I had in mind was a) reformatting and reinstalling everything, step-by-step, on the original laptop drive (that had become too cluttered and corrupted) and, when I had everything working well, b) cloning the drive to an external drive as a backup. Then if, for one reason or another, I wanted to repeat the process in the future, I would be able to install the clone stored on the external hard-drive on the original, reformatted laptop hard-drive and be good to go. There would be no actual hard-drive replacement involved.
Is that feasible?
Regards to all,
John P. Owens
A clone is at disk level.
Once you clone the updated system onto the external disk, the external disk assumes all characteristics and data of the source. All prior data on the external has been wiped.
As long as the system is not Lenova, then cloning from the source to a usb should (?) still work.
Once the clone process is finished, disconnect the external before any further boots so the source Windows only sees itself and nolt the clone.
Clone process is best done when booted from the TI Recovery CD
Another option is to make a disk image backup of the current computer and the resulting large tib backup file will be just another file which can be stored on the exteranal without bothering the other contents of the external.
Later, the backup can be restored onto a new disk (not inself) and the new disk will be indentical to what the disk was at time the backup file was created.