a few cloning questions

[john doe]

im looking to buy some cloning software and done a couple of trials but i have a couple of questions

acronis seems to only be able to clone the whole drive to a whole drive not partition to partition - have i missed something?

i quite liked the speed of spotmau, does faster mean more chance of errors?

can a cloned image be split open in another application to get at individual files?

any other recommendations based on speed accuracy and the ability to open the image up?

i know there are lots of threads on cloning software but they all seem to be just recommendations without the reasons why

[RyanMeray]

Acronis doesn't natively handle partitions very elegantly, and for that, you need the DiskMagic companion program to do stuff with individual partitions. It can be done in Acronis, but not very effectively.

Acronis will let you mount the files as disks which makes retrieving single files very easy.

I've only really put Acronis through the paces, but I'm going to be testing Macrium Reflect as soon as I have time.

[nelsonm]

Acronis will do you just fine.

I don't know of a single app that does not have some quirkiness but it will handle partitions. The Acronis forum is very useful in finding answers to most questions.

As with all imaging apps, make sure Acronis verifies the backup and always keep a renamed known good backup that will not be accidentally overwritten by a scheduled task backup. Images files can also be blown away by interrupting a backup or having the app or system crash during a backup leaving you with nothing to restore.

I always keep the following images on by backup drive:

1. system drive - save.tib (does not get replaced by weekly or monthly unless there are major updates and the drive has been disinfected and cleaned)


2. system drive - weekly.tib (overwritten weekly)


3. system drive - monthly.tib (overwritten monthly)