What is the difference between doing a drive image back-up and doing a drive clone back-up?

If I have the need to restore from image or clone, how do I do this if I don't have the original Seagate disk wizard which created the files?

opalhort

You can download it from here > Disc Wizard. The manual is here > Disc Wizard .pdf

Differences between cloning/imaging/backup > Cloning HDD. For most practical purposes the two terms can be used interchangeably.

Thanks Tywais

Why couldn't I find the info?

But I'm still not clear about the difference between an image copy and a clone copy.

I try to back up everything because it appears that the BSA is heading our way!

opalhort

But I'm still not clear about the difference between an image copy and a clone copy.

A simplified version is if you are cloning a disk you usually have the original disk and a 2nd disk you wish to make an exact copy to. This is device to device cloning where the original disk is copied (mirrored) to the 2nd drive. Imaging, is instead of a hard device you are creating a file of the exact image of the original disk. That file then can be used to create an exact image on any number of drives.

As I mentioned the terms are commonly used interchangeably even though there is a difference by definition.

An example: On my university server I installed a 2nd identical drive as an emergency (yes, I know about RAID) and cloned the first drive to it. If the first drive fails, I activate the 2nd drive and it comes up exactly the same.

Doing an image should result in a fully functioning copy of the original, other forms of backup will keep all your files but some system files are not copied and this backup will not boot and function like the original.

Thanks a lot for all your replies.

I think I've got it now.

I have now created image files of all our HDDs on an external USB drive (one folder per PC) and also created bootable .iso files in the same folder for each PC (I know it would have to be put on a DVD first in order to use it as a boot disk).

I guess this should be all I need if something happens to any one of the PCs.

opalhort

Thanks a lot for all your replies.

I think I've got it now.

I have now created image files of all our HDDs on an external USB drive (one folder per PC) and also created bootable .iso files in the same folder for each PC (I know it would have to be put on a DVD first in order to use it as a boot disk).

I guess this should be all I need if something happens to any one of the PCs.

opalhort

Keep in mind you will need to do data backups along the way or do the whole image again reguarly if time permits.

Keep in mind you will need to do data backups along the way or do the whole image again reguarly if time permits.

Yes, I'm well aware of that and I do run daily data back-ups to multiple PCs.

I'm not concerned about data. My concern is more the installations of all the programs in case something goes wrong.

opalhort