Question on HD Backup vs Cloning

Having two HD bays in my 7811FX I thought it would be convenient to add a 2nd HD for backups. I thought about using Raid 1 as its available in the bios, but, on reflection most of my problems have been accidental manual deletes or downloading a problem file from the net. Raid 1 wouldn't help me here as both drive will simultaneously process the same problem.

So I thought a daily backup to the second bay HD would be a better idea. The thinking here is a mirror image of the primary HD including OS and all registry files. If primary drive crashes, I physically swap the second HD backup in its place, boot up, and away I go.

What I am finding is that all the 'backup software' like Acronus, ShadowProtect, Ghost, etc, make 'image files' on the backup HD. You then have to boot off a recovery disk, and restore the data from the 'image HD' to a new replacement HD. You can NOT convert the image HD to a bootable identical HD of the primary.

Does anyone know of a way, I can daily mirror or clone the primary HD to the secondary HD, but have the second HD be a bootable, identical, ready to go copy of the primary HD? Additional software is fine, but I don't want to have to take both HD out of the laptop and put them in a HD copying machine.

 

You can use EASEUS Todo Backup to make a clone.

 

I use acronis and clone the entire drive about once a month.

 

I take it there isn't a software package that lets you do differential cloning, ie, lets you clone everyday but only copies what is new.

It seems that the image backup is the way most common, and that does permit differential backups. But the restore is only to another drive and with a restore CD to start the system.

 

You don't HAVE to have a restore CD. If you can still boot into Windows you can initiate a restore from the Windows GUI (With Acronis True Image Home 2011 anyway) and it will modify the MBR appropriately, reboot the machine, load the rescue utility, and perform the restoration.

What I personally like about doing a full+diff image with Acronis is I don't have to waste another drive on nothing but backups.

While it's a worthwhile investment, you could easilly partition the drive to use 50% as an accessable working storage area for files/music/or whatever, and have the other 50% set up as your ASZ (Acronis Secure Zone) just for backups.

Acronis can do what you're wanting to do as well... Cloning a drive...

I'm not sure of a solution that can do differential changes to a clone though. Not a request I hear very often.

 

Somehting else Acronis True Image Home 2011 includes is a feature called "Try & Decide" that is pretty cool and may address one of your concerns.

It's somewhat similar to the windows recovery tool. But it requires some proactive steps on your part...

When you know you are making a big change to your system, you start up the Try & Decide tool, make your changes and see if it effects the system. Once you are done you apply the change which shuts down Try & Decide. It basically records everything you do, if you like it, it commits it to disk. If you don't like it or it destroys something, you just cancel the change and it goes back to the state it was in before you started the Try & Decide process.

Pretty cool, works like a champ!