Drive cloning and imaging are the two easiest and possibly free way of backing up your hard drive data including files, MBR (master boot record), partition table, boot record and more. Both process are slightly different from one another and provides separate advantages over one another. However, the purpose are same and both is used for the safety of your data.
Before diving in, let’s clarify what these methods are and which option you should choose, either clone the drive or image the drive. Drive cloning or ghosting is a process of creating exact copy of an internal or external storage device to a different drive of same size. While cloning the drive, you are backing up each and everything to the new drive so could you boot and run another computer system using the cloned hard drive. Cloning will help in easily replacing failing or dying hard drive and move all your data as well as the operating system to a new SSD or traditional hard drives. Thus, cloning will helps you against tragic data loss situations which often compromises business or valuable document loss that you are not going to take back ever.Though, its always a chances of data loss being arisen these days due to some unavoidable facts and it's strongly recommended to use powerful hard drive recovery software to stay away from such circumstances.
Disk imaging works more likely taking a regular backup of entire hard drive. This option will also copy all your data in one large file though you’ll need a decompression tool to restore everything back from the created image. If you want, can create multiple copies of same image and distribute it to various external hard drive which ensures that if one drive fails or unwillingly gone corrupt, you still have another copy left and can restore data from using the functional drive.
Benefits of Cloning Vs Imaging
#1. Top level of safety to your crucial data. Cloning will help users in migrating from HDD to HDD or HDD to SSD or vice versa. Whereas, Imaging simply puts everything to new drive like one large zip file. Though, you can’t use the same created backup file to access data. The same tool (imaging program) is used to unzip all the data on to the same or different drive.
#2. Cloning never lets you lose your PC customizations and settings or even the registry changes. It puts everything from old to new storage device ranging from files to folders, operating system to file system, registry changes to device manager settings etc. Imaging is used for backup purpose only so could you never lose data if the source drive fails or become inaccessible. You can use any fresh or used drive to restore data back from the created image.
#3. Same size of hard drive is needed for cloning purpose. However, you can store multiple copies of create image in relatively one large hard drive. Later, you can use the created images for distribution across local workgroups or family members and let them access your data (if that isn’t a matter of concern).
#4. Cloned drives is ready immediately for use on different computer, you don’t even need the source drive to start the system. Cloned drive will have each and everything to boot your system and access installed applications or stored files. Imaging only lets you see the stored content, the drive itself isn’t bootable or can make you able to start the system using the created image.
#5. Any damaged or bad sectors and blocks will be copied too in the cloned copy which keeps giving system into freezes or hangs. Though, the bad sectors will not going to harm the new computer, you’ll only not able to access the data stored on that particular area. Imaging runs smoothly on the drive even with bad sectors and blocks and will skip them for healthy backup creation process. The only drawback it’ll have is you can’t control on how much data or which area of your hard drive will be missed by imaging.
Debate over hard drive cloning and imaging is popular since long ago and expert recommend to use either options, depend on the kind of problem you’re facing or activities you would want to perform. However, if used properly, both options are of great use and provides large set of benefits for users from various domain. Do you like any particular feature of drive cloning or imaging?? Go ahead and post it in comments.
Before diving in, let’s clarify what these methods are and which option you should choose, either clone the drive or image the drive. Drive cloning or ghosting is a process of creating exact copy of an internal or external storage device to a different drive of same size. While cloning the drive, you are backing up each and everything to the new drive so could you boot and run another computer system using the cloned hard drive. Cloning will help in easily replacing failing or dying hard drive and move all your data as well as the operating system to a new SSD or traditional hard drives. Thus, cloning will helps you against tragic data loss situations which often compromises business or valuable document loss that you are not going to take back ever.Though, its always a chances of data loss being arisen these days due to some unavoidable facts and it's strongly recommended to use powerful hard drive recovery software to stay away from such circumstances.
Disk imaging works more likely taking a regular backup of entire hard drive. This option will also copy all your data in one large file though you’ll need a decompression tool to restore everything back from the created image. If you want, can create multiple copies of same image and distribute it to various external hard drive which ensures that if one drive fails or unwillingly gone corrupt, you still have another copy left and can restore data from using the functional drive.
Benefits of Cloning Vs Imaging
#1. Top level of safety to your crucial data. Cloning will help users in migrating from HDD to HDD or HDD to SSD or vice versa. Whereas, Imaging simply puts everything to new drive like one large zip file. Though, you can’t use the same created backup file to access data. The same tool (imaging program) is used to unzip all the data on to the same or different drive.
#2. Cloning never lets you lose your PC customizations and settings or even the registry changes. It puts everything from old to new storage device ranging from files to folders, operating system to file system, registry changes to device manager settings etc. Imaging is used for backup purpose only so could you never lose data if the source drive fails or become inaccessible. You can use any fresh or used drive to restore data back from the created image.
#3. Same size of hard drive is needed for cloning purpose. However, you can store multiple copies of create image in relatively one large hard drive. Later, you can use the created images for distribution across local workgroups or family members and let them access your data (if that isn’t a matter of concern).
#4. Cloned drives is ready immediately for use on different computer, you don’t even need the source drive to start the system. Cloned drive will have each and everything to boot your system and access installed applications or stored files. Imaging only lets you see the stored content, the drive itself isn’t bootable or can make you able to start the system using the created image.
#5. Any damaged or bad sectors and blocks will be copied too in the cloned copy which keeps giving system into freezes or hangs. Though, the bad sectors will not going to harm the new computer, you’ll only not able to access the data stored on that particular area. Imaging runs smoothly on the drive even with bad sectors and blocks and will skip them for healthy backup creation process. The only drawback it’ll have is you can’t control on how much data or which area of your hard drive will be missed by imaging.
Debate over hard drive cloning and imaging is popular since long ago and expert recommend to use either options, depend on the kind of problem you’re facing or activities you would want to perform. However, if used properly, both options are of great use and provides large set of benefits for users from various domain. Do you like any particular feature of drive cloning or imaging?? Go ahead and post it in comments.