Continuation of: Make a bootable ISO of my main hard drive

jagman_55

Distinguished
Jun 20, 2010
15
0
18,510
I really need to get serious of having an additional boot drive for emergencies when Windows gets corrupted or fails.

Make a bootable ISO of my main hard drive Was a great discussion and amen to needing a clone/copy as Windows over time is risky at best.
My additional questions, in case I missed it in the original thread are:
1. Does the target clone have to be SAME size? Larger?
2. Will a USB slow the clone down either USB 2 or 3?
3. I am planning on installing a SATA 3 SSD, 256gb for the boot drive.
Maybe using a older HHD as the clone. Any issue there?
4. I guest BEST option is the SSD primary boot, and buy another SSD same size for the clone.
5. CASPER, does it allow selective backup/clone of data you want to keep or are you forced to clone the entire disk? I was thinking maybe cloning only the OS, no data, etc.

The time it takes to get Windows rebuilt, all all the programs is huge compared to the time cost of this hardware.

Thanks.
 
Solution
Casper is good, I've used it.
Macrium Reflect is good, I've used it. And prefer it.

Now...what continuing end state are you looking for? A drive image, or a full bootable clone off on a different drive?


I use macrium, and create a series of Full drive images, off on a different drive.
In the case of a dead C drive, boot from the Macrium Reflect Rescue CD, tell it wich image, and what drive to recover to, Go.
Takes maybe 20 minutes to reconstitute, with a C drive of ~140GB used space.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Casper is good, I've used it.
Macrium Reflect is good, I've used it. And prefer it.

Now...what continuing end state are you looking for? A drive image, or a full bootable clone off on a different drive?


I use macrium, and create a series of Full drive images, off on a different drive.
In the case of a dead C drive, boot from the Macrium Reflect Rescue CD, tell it wich image, and what drive to recover to, Go.
Takes maybe 20 minutes to reconstitute, with a C drive of ~140GB used space.
 
Solution