first time backing up stuff... cloning vs backup softwares?

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berninicaco3

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Mar 16, 2013
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I'll admit, despite having heard this admonition for years, I have NEVER BACKED UP.
Well, I've been lucky so far, and it's never too late to start.

Now a few months ago I built a new system and I decided to do a 'clone'. I ran into issues, because I had 2 hard drives in the desktop at once, each with Windows on it (I'd just cloned), so windows played hell with which hard drive it put which boot files onto-- I was stuck with both hard drives to get windows to run on either until I sorted it out.

But that was its own issue.

Compared to cloning, how does a backup work? I want to save EVERYTHING-- so if there was a problem, I could be up and running again in the hour it takes to transfer stuff over, having to reinstall nothing, not windows, not any software, not any drivers.

Should I just save a clone onto my old external?

What I'm terrified of is that I'll just blindly use something for years, until one day I need it, and then it doesn't work.

And, if backup software is better than a straightforward clone, what do you recommend? There are many options to choose from.
 
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Dogsnake
Cloning=making a copy to another drive; a drive image is like having a snapshot of the drive at the time it was done. If your drive is damaged you can use it to create a new drive that will be a copy of your drive at the time the image was made. Anything added or removed after the image will not be there. Back Ups usually are copies of data (pics, docs, music, etc) that you want to be sure to have if something goes bad. You need to consider two main areas of failure. One is where the hardware gets broken and the other is where the software is corrupted but the hardware is ok. To protect where either case goes down, you need a second drive on which you have your back up files and or image stored. Then after replacing the bad hardware you...
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Mar 16, 2013
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Cloning, imaging, backups. Three similar, but slightly different concepts.

Cloning (or migration) is moving a whole installation from one drive to another.
Imaging is making an image of a current drive (or partition) to use later.
Backup - any of a number of similar ways to do pretty much the same as 'imaging.

I believe what you're looking for is imaging or a regular Windows backup.
Many of the current applications will do an "image". DriveImageXML or CloneZilla. Create an images saved to another drive. In case of fail...restore from that image.
 
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Dogsnake

Dogsnake

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Oct 20, 2006
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Cloning=making a copy to another drive; a drive image is like having a snapshot of the drive at the time it was done. If your drive is damaged you can use it to create a new drive that will be a copy of your drive at the time the image was made. Anything added or removed after the image will not be there. Back Ups usually are copies of data (pics, docs, music, etc) that you want to be sure to have if something goes bad. You need to consider two main areas of failure. One is where the hardware gets broken and the other is where the software is corrupted but the hardware is ok. To protect where either case goes down, you need a second drive on which you have your back up files and or image stored. Then after replacing the bad hardware you could use them for some type of restore and if it is software (OS catastrophe) use the image or do a clean install then use the back ups to restore the data. Windows 7-8 has built into it software to do both types of functions. This is a very general overview.
 
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