I can't decide best way to clone a disk

Sanders0492

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I have a hard drive that has some problems and want to ensure nothing happens to it while getting files. What is the best way to clone it? I think I'd prefer byte for byte cloning, right?

I have it narrowed down to Clonezilla and dd but have no idea which is safer/better. Also, is it bad if the destination hard drive is bigger than the one I am cloning?

Thanks for any help! I'm new to this and don't want to mess this up, considering it's my brother's backup of his wife's stuff.
 
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It is making an image of whole disk, all partitions or just ones needed for booting into OS. Although I don't remember screwing up source disk while cloning, I have seen few examples of that happening, even in this forum.
Advantage of making image is that you can keep it safe somewhere and redo it at any time. It's also a good backup if some disaster strikes disk or system. So made image can also be incrementally updated periodically to reflect changes and be able to get back to working system in minutes. Best prevention is to make backups. If you had backup made in time you wouldn't have to worry about cloning now.

Sanders0492

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I had originally tried clonezilla, but for whatever reason, clonezilla will never work on my machine (have tried it before and never did). Is this basically the same thing? And can it make byte-for-byte copies of an entire disk? Does it include the MBR and partition table and stuff like that? (I'm not certain if what I'm saying makes any sense ha)
 


Mike:
I can relate only my experience re disk-cloning operations over a period of about 20 years. During that period I've personally performed and/or participated in thousands of disk-cloning operations involving a multitude of PC systems. Up to about 10 years ago I used a variety of d-c programs, however, for about the last 10 years or so I use (nearly exclusively) the Casper d-c program, although I have experimented as well with a variety of other programs.

During all that time involving thousands of d-c operations I can recall only a single case where the source drive became corrupted as a direct result of the d-c operation. And even here, as I recall, there was some question as to whether it was due to some deficiency inherent in the program or the result of some electrical power malfunction in the system that occurred during the d-c operation.

In a number of cases that were brought to my attention by PC users complaining about a problem they experienced re a corrupted source drive during a d-c operation, we found that in EVERY case the problem was a result of user error in that the user misidentified the source & destination drives during the d-c operation.

Having said all this...if a user would ask me to give him or her 100% assurance that carrying out a d-c operation will never, under any circumstances, result in their source drive being corrupted as a result of that operation, it's obvious I could not do that as I'm sure you would agree.

However, we routinely strongly recommend d-c as a viable, safe operation for a PC user to perform when circumstances are present for a transfer of data from one drive to another as they seem to be in the OP's case. I say "seem to be" because he indicates there are "some problems" with the source drive. Depending upon the extent & severity of these "problems" the d-c program may balk at carrying out the d-c operation. But in any event even if the d-c operation cannot be successfully performed it should have no negative impact on the source drive's data.
 
It is making an image of whole disk, all partitions or just ones needed for booting into OS. Although I don't remember screwing up source disk while cloning, I have seen few examples of that happening, even in this forum.
Advantage of making image is that you can keep it safe somewhere and redo it at any time. It's also a good backup if some disaster strikes disk or system. So made image can also be incrementally updated periodically to reflect changes and be able to get back to working system in minutes. Best prevention is to make backups. If you had backup made in time you wouldn't have to worry about cloning now.
 
Solution