For the purposes of this question I am using Acronis TrueImage 2011.
My highest priority in creating a HD backup is protecting my important files; work files, financial records, email, etc.
That said, I’d also like to have options should (for example) the registry get horked and I need to roll back before the damage; and to recover systems settings (and, ideally, settings for things like my Outlook email accounts, FTP accounts saved in Filezilla, etc.).
Does is make more sense to create a backup (and should I do so sector-by-sector)? Or to create a clone? Can you do differential updates to a clone, or would I have to do a full clone over and over? What is the difference between a backup and a clone?
My external backup hard drive is 500GB, the internal one that contains the data I’m backing up is 320GB. I don’t think I’d have enough space to do both (do backup files get compressed)?
As a secondary, farther-down-the-line question, eventually I’d like to replace my internal and external drives with 1TB drives; at that point I’d like to rework my partitions. The guy who originally set up my computer was an idiot who said that there would be huge advantages to putting the OS (WinXP Pro 64) on one partition, the software on a second partition, and files on a third. For a variety of reasons having the OS and software on separate partitions doesn’t work well at all, so I’d like to have one larger partition for OS and software, and one for files. Since I’d be going from 3 partitions to 2, I assume making a clone wouldn’t be as helpful as otherwise? What would be the easiest way to accomplish this (ideally being able to bring settings/configs such as email accounts in Outlook, FTP accounts in Filezilla, over through the backup, rather than having to write everything down and recreate it).
I’m short on time at the moment. Others may elaborate.
If you clone a hard drive you should be able to take that cloned drive and swap it for your internal hard drive. It should boot up as though it were the drive you just swapped it. On the other hand, if you backup a hard drive, the backup software will probably use a proprietary format to store the files on the external drive. You cannot take that drive and swap it for the current internal drive and boot your computer. Also, backup software often only addresses data files and not operating system files, and that includes Windows Registry files.
FWIW, my laptops are all partitioned the same way that guy set up your machine: C-O/S, D-Program Apps, E-Data files. I’ve always done it this way (20+ years) with nary a problem. Yes, there is an advantage to this method, at least for me.
I actually follow a rigid clone/backup process with my machines. All of them are regularly backed up to a home server using True Image 2011. Once a month, each hard drive is cloned to an identical external hard drive to preserve the full disk image, using Paragon Hard Drive Utilities.
Duckster hit it right on the head. I’ve done clones for people and it’s fairly simple.
The advantage is you can just the hard drive, make a clone to an external back up and swap the drives out.
Then you run CHKDSK on the new drive (with the clone), this will usually swap some files around and you’ll be ready to go.
If you do a backup, it doesn’t back up system files nor software files. (See your backup software for which files it will backup)
Back ups have options to choose if you want to compress the files. Obviously the more you compress it the longer it takes. The back up uses a zip or rar file and also produces a hash, that way it can verify with the hash that the back up is an exact copy of the original
With a back up if the hard drive fails then you have to re-install the O/S and re-install all the software. I prefer this method as it gives you a chance to clean up the registgry. When you do a re-install from your recovery disk you get the system as it was when you bought the computer.
My two favourite softwares to clone drives are (they are both freeware)
They’re fairly easy to use, as long as you read them through first.
There are a few easier backup / clone softwares, that are more user friendly but they cost. And those two are not hard if you just take the time to read them.
1> some software simply doesn’t ask you where you want to install it. It’s C:/Program Files or nothing. I cannot install it on the D: partition. This is problematic when I’ve installed the “main” software on D:, but the add-on piece installs itself on C:. Now the software isn’t talking to each other properly. It’s also taking up space on my (small) C: drive.
2> Application data is still stored on C:. So are a number of software caches. Way too many for me to hunt down and dump repeatedly by hand. After the first year I had to buy partition manager software to resize the partitions because C: was completely full (he’d allotted only 10GB for C:). And another 3 years after that, C: is nearly full again (35GB), so I need to figure out this backup stuff quickly so I can resize C: YET again.
If you’ve developed some sort of system that deals with these problems, I’d love to hear it, but it’s been a bloody hassle for me.
In any case, it sounds like if I want all my configurations and settings, in addition to data files, I have to clone the hard drive? Is this resource intensive if I wanted to back up daily? Or can I differentially update a clone, too? Is there any other way to back up configs/settings so I could do a clean install of the OS and software (on a new hard drive), but still have my Outlook, Filezilla, etc. account settings saved and ready to be plopped back in?
I’ve not developed an entire system, but there is a feature that may come in handy for you: junction points or symbolic links* (hereafter just called symlinks).
You can convert C:\Program Files (or any other folder) into a symlink, and have it point to any other folder on your system. Unlike a shortcut, as far as any program is concerned, the files are really at C:\Program Files.
The easiest way to create symlinks is to use a third party Explorer addon called Link Shell Extension. The link also describes other ways of doing it, but they tend to involve using the command line.
The basic instructions are to make sure the folder is not in use, and copy its contents to your source folder. Then delete the original folder, and create a new symlink with the same name that will point to your source folder.
*Junction points have been around since Windows 2000, while Symbolic links were new to Vista. Thus both are available in Vista or Windows 7, while only Junction points are available in Windows XP.