Solved! Macrium Reflect for cloning disks

dictum9

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I've used this software for several years with great results. It clones one boot disk onto another. IN case the primary fails, I have a backup.
 
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A full clone sucks up an entire second drive.
Full + Incremental or Differential simply exists in folders on a different drive.
I have 3 different PC's...8 different drives...all backed up to a single drive (of sufficient size).
My main system does an Incremental backup every night. Keep for 2 weeks, and then roll into a FUll image. Repeat as time goes on.

And yes, you can use a Macrium Full, or Full + Incremental...to restore the whole system as it existed at the moment the image was created.
On whatever drive you choose.

A fully...

USAFRet

Illustrious
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My systems do an incremental backup (not a full clone) every night.
And then of course all the tools and resources available in the Macrium Rescue CD or USB.
 

dictum9

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What are the pros/cons of incremental versus a full clone of the drive?

I want a fully bootable Solid state drive, not backups per se. Can you create bootable via incremental schedule?


 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


A full clone sucks up an entire second drive.
Full + Incremental or Differential simply exists in folders on a different drive.
I have 3 different PC's...8 different drives...all backed up to a single drive (of sufficient size).
My main system does an Incremental backup every night. Keep for 2 weeks, and then roll into a FUll image. Repeat as time goes on.

And yes, you can use a Macrium Full, or Full + Incremental...to restore the whole system as it existed at the moment the image was created.
On whatever drive you choose.

A fully bootable second drive serves little purpose, for me. I can live with the 20 minutes it would take to resurrect that nightly image off to a new drive.
My backups are never more than 24 hours out of date.


And...I've seen instances where a fully bootable second drive is a bad thing.
A user here last year had an issue...start the system up, and it looked exactly like it did 6 months ago. Desktop wallpaper, files gone, old applications reappearing...
WTF?
Virus? Windows updates screwing with things?
No....
After a couple of days investigation, we discovered that it was simply a bad SATA cable.

He had cloned from HDD to SSD a few months previous. And left the fully bootable OS on the HDD.
For whatever reason, the cable went bad.
He booted up, and the system simply skipped the SSD (due to the bad cable) and booted up from the secondary drive. With the OS in the state it was on the day he cloned it several months previous.
Replace the cable...no more problem.
But the second drive with the bootable OS led to the initial confusion.

Rebuilding the system from the Macrium image takes maybe 1/2 hour.
Also, I can rebuild the system from the state it was on any specific day in the last 14 days.
I basically have 14 images to select from. With a full clone, you have 1.
 
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dictum9

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Problem is, it's not really my computer, but a machine in the hands of a computer-illiterate person. I don't have access to that computer. There is not skills set to do incremental or anything more complicated, let alone the ability to do a restore.
I set up for it to clone once a week. If the primary drive fails, I think the user *may* have the skills to open the case and swap drive0 for drive1, to boot off the alternate disk.