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Is Cloning My Answer

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Being a relative novice I would like a bit of advice about True Image Home please.
My desktop PC has two hard drives 'C' and 'E' with Windows XP Pro and a few other odds & ends on 'C'. Both drives are configured as basic single partition. I am very worried that, inevitably the 'C' drive will sooner or later go up in smoke and I have no contingencies to safeguard my operating system (I have no Windows discs whatsoever - just the licence key).
I am not too worried about 'E' drive failing because it only holds fairly non-critical files which I have backed up conventionally anyway. I have read, read and re-read Acronis user guide and all sorts of forums but am not confident that I fully understand that I am on the right track.
Given that I download Acronis my understanding is that all I need to do is create a Clone of my 'C' drive into the 'E' drive and therefore have my OS sitting on both drives (there is approx 18Gb of unused space on 'E'). Then, when the 'C' drive completely disintegrates I just throw it away and I can carry on as norm simply by using 'E'.
Am I over simplifying things or is it really that easy ?.
Also, if it is that simple do I need to create any sort of boot discs for any reason ?.
Would appreciate some moral support. Many Thanks.

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Graham:

I started with a fully cloned system hard drive that I stored in my closet. This gave me some insurance, but not enough.

After several steps in increasing the quality of my data safety, I have come to a point where I feel safe and have more options.

I bought an external USB hard drive base that I can slip any SATA hard drive into, this cost me $35. Since I have some spare SATA hard drives I didn't buy any more of them.

Now I put a SATA drive in my external USB drive base and use TI-2009 Home to create and store a full image (not a clone) of my complete system drive on the extra SATA hard drive. The extra hard drive has room on it for many different full images. I create a new image whenever I feel like doing it.

If my current system drive, C:, happens to crash I would simply remove it from the computer and install another working drive in its place. This could be a new empty drive, or a used drive I might have sitting around. Once the new drive is cabled up, I would boot from the TI Rescue CD that I made the day I installed TI. This is IMPORTANT, create and test the rescue CD asap, this is how you restore to a non-win booting computer. Once the CD is booted (Linux environment) you tell it which of your TI back-up images you want to restore to the new hard drive. Perform the restore, remove the boot CD, reboot to Windows and you are good to go.

The advantage is the ability to have many images stored on one hard drive. I image after important changes to my system, after a significant time has passed, or just when I'm looking for something to do. Old images can be deleted to make room for new ones. Several hard drives can hold images allowing you to store one in a remote location, etc. If you clone, you get only one backup per hard drive.

Never store an image on the drive you are protecting, if it dies, your image is also gone. Don't use any of the TI extra features until you are good at the very basics. Don't create a "secure zone" because you don't need to. Do all backups in manual mode and ignore scheduling until later. Do all images as "full" images to avoid the complication of incremental extra backups. Keep it simple as possible.

Fungus

Thanks very much for that easily understood reply Fungus - what a good idea.
Just a couple more questions please just to satisfy my curiosity/quest for knowledge.
1) Does the ext drive that fits into the USB hard drive base have to be SATA i.e could it be PATA ?.
2) What is the difference between a Clone and an Image ?.

Again, thanks for taking so much trouble with the reply.

Graham

Sure you could use PATA if the enclosure is made for PATA. There are some enclosures that will handle both types - I happen to have one.

A Clone will be bootable just like the original from which it was made. An Image has to go through the restore process before it becomes bootable just like the original. You can put only one Clone on a drive whereas you can have many Images, space permitting, on a single drive.

To learn more read the Sticky at the top by GroverH - lots of useful info in there.