Should i clone or image a drive

Both cloning and imaging create an exact record of your drive. That includes all the files on the drives along with the master boot record and everything else your PC needs to boot in Windows. So how do they differ? Disk Imaging: Imaging creates a large compressed file of your drive. You can then restore this file to bring your drive back to life. Because the image file itself is large, they are often saved to external drives or the cloud. Disk Cloning: Cloning creates an exact, uncompressed replica of your drive.

If a hard drive fails, you can remove it and replace it with the cloned drive. For this example, taking an image beats cloning. So you decide to upgrade your primary mechanical hard drive to a speedy new flash drive. You have at least two options:. Both techniques will work for each of these chores.

But imaging usually makes more sense for a backup, while cloning is the easiest choice for drive upgrades. Send your query to answer pcworld.

Why not just drag and drop? Imaging, on the other hand, requires you to do all of that twice. You plug a third, spare drive into the PC and create the image file on it. Then, this cloning software will inform you how to boot your computer from the target disk. Just do it when there is a need. In "clone VS image" part, you know imaging is more flexible for computer protection because of its compression nature and supported backup types.

Well then, how do you image a hard drive? To back up your computer, you had better use a piece of professional backup software. Here, MiniTool ShadowMaker, hard drive image software, is well worth recommending since it allows creating an automatic backup, full backup, incremental and differential backup for the Windows and hard drive.

In the Backup tab, you see this program has checked system partitions to back up by default. To back up a hard drive, please click Source section, select a disk strongly recommend system disk and then check all disk partitions.

Select one storage path for the disk image. Here, you had better back up your hard drive to a partition of an external hard drive. In the Backup tab, you see two features on the lower left side: Schedule and Scheme. From the above contents, you know MiniTool ShadowMaker is really helpful for computer backup since it supports not only disk cloning but also disk imaging.

Disk imaging VS disk cloning, no matter which one you want to use, this free hard drive image software is your good option. Get it now via the following button. Clone VS image or clone VS backup: what the difference between image and clone? When to image a hard drive or when to clone a hard drive? After reading this post, you have learned much. If you have any questions about using our software, please tell us by sending an email to [email protected] or leaving a comment below.

Also, any suggestions of backup methods are welcome. Download Partition Wizard. Get the Answer Now! Tip: What's the difference between these three types of image backup? Note: a In most cases, to choose a system disk as the source disk is a good option. Hence, please make sure there is enough disk space on your target disk so as to hold all source data. Then, a warning appears telling you all target disk data will be destroyed.

Consequently, ensure no important files are saved on this disk or back up them in advance. What is the difference between image and clone? When cloning a disk, everything on the original disk is cloned to another disk.