ElectricRhino (and others who may be interested)...
First of all let me say at the outset that I have no financial or any other commercial interest in the Casper disk-cloning software. I mention this because I have often been accused of being a zealot for that program so I must have some financial interest in the product. I am merely a satisfied (very satisfied!) user of this software.
I have been using various versions of the Casper disk-cloning program for about 10 years or so. (The current version is Casper 8). During that time I have probably used the program thousands of times cloning hundreds of hard drives (HDD) and SSDs. My experience has been solely with the various MS OSs primarily with XP, Vista, Windows 7 & 8.
The basic point of a disk-cloning program such as the Casper program is that by cloning the contents of one's day-to-day working HDD or SSD to another HDD/SSD (internal or external), the user creates a precise copy of his or her "source" HDD/SSD. Thus, a comprehensive backup of one's system has been accomplished in one fell swoop, i.e., the user has backed up his/her entire system including the operating system, all programs & applications, registry, configurations, and of course, all user-created data. In short - *everything* that's on the source drive. So that the recipient of the cloned contents - the "destination" HDD/SSD - will be, for all practical purposes - a precise copy of the source HDD with all data immediately accessible. What better backup system can one have?
While there are other disk-cloning programs (Acronis True Image is one) that can perform this operation, Casper has a rather extraordinary ability to create "incremental clones", using what Casper refers to as its "SmartClone" technology. Understand that the "incremental clone" thus created is a *complete* clone of the source disk, not an "incremental file". The result of this incremental clone process is that it takes the user only a fraction of the time to create subsequent clones of the source HDD/SSD than it would otherwise take using the typical disk-cloning methodology.
As an example...
When a typical disk-cloning program undertakes its disk-to-disk cloning process it does so without regard that the source and destination drives involved in the disk-cloning operation are the *identical* drives that had been involved when a prior disk-cloning operation had been undertaken. It doesn't matter to the disk-cloning program whether the HDD/SSD now being cloned was cloned an hour ago, or a day ago, or whenever. The "now" disk-cloning operation will proceed as if the HDD/SSD recipient of the clone, i.e., the destination HDD/SSD is bare of data, even if that same destination HDD/SSD was the recipient of a prior clone from the same source HDD/SSD 10 minutes ago.
As a result...
The disk-cloning operation will take a substantial amount of time to "do its work" each time the disk-cloning operation is undertaken, without regard to the fact that perhaps only a relatively few changes involving the source HDD/SSD's data has changed since the last disk-cloning operation. So, as an example, let's say it takes about 40 minutes or so to clone the contents of a drive containing 100 GB of data to another drive. Two days later the user decides to again back up his or her system by undertaking another disk-cloning operation. Presumably the data changes over those two days haven't been especially large. But with the typical disk-cloning program, it will take the disk-cloning program just about the *same* period of time to perform current the disk-cloning operation as it did originally, i.e., 40 minutes, in the preceding example. And so on and so on in the following days.
But with the Casper program, the program has the capability of recognizing *only* the change in data that has occurred from its last disk-cloning operation and will proceed to "do its work" on that basis. Thus, given the example above it will probably take less than 4 minutes or so to complete the disk-cloning operation. And so on and so forth.
So you can see what a valuable incentive this is for users to systematically & routinely backup their systems with the Casper program - knowing that the expenditure of time to complete the disk-cloning operation will be relatively slight. Surely this is a strong incentive for a user to maintain his/her complete system in a reasonably up-to-date fashion. Obviously the amount of time it will take to complete this "incremental" disk-cloning operation using Casper will be dependent upon the total volume of data being cloned as well as the additions, deletions, configuration changes, etc. that the PC user had made since he or she undertook the previous disk-cloning operation. So the user is encouraged to perform these disk-cloning operations on a relatively frequent basis since by doing so the expenditure of time in completing the operation will be relatively short. This last point is crucial. The program works best when it is used with a fairly high degree of frequency - perhaps not less than once a week or even on a daily or two or three times a week basis . When it is used in that manner, the expenditure of time in completing the disk (or partition)-cloning operation comes close to being trifling. And most importantly the user is secure in the knowledge that he/she has an up-to-date complete backup of his/her system
A quick example based upon one of my PCs SSDs containing total data of about 105 GB. Note this is *total* data - including the OS, all programs & applications, all my user-created data - in short, *everything* that's on that "source" SSD.
I last used the Casper program to clone the contents of that drive four days ago. Naturally, like most users, I've made changes of various kinds over that four-day period. Added, deleted, modified some programs, manipulated this or that configuration, etc., etc. More or less the typical kinds of changes made by most users over a period of time. Earlier today I again cloned the contents of that source SSD to one of my desktop's internal SSDs. It took just about 2 minutes. Two minutes. (I should point out that I've been converting nearly all my HDDs to SSDs so disk-cloning speed is considerably faster than when using HDDs. I would estimate that in the example I've given it would have taken about 4 minutes to complete the disk-cloning operation using HDDs as the source & destination disks).
The point to keep in mind is that the recipient of the clone - the destination HDD/SSD - will be a precise copy of the source HDD/SSD with all its data immediately accessible in exactly the same way one would access data from their source drive - their day-to-day working HDD/SSD in most cases. And the destination HDD/SSD, should it be another internal HDD/SSD or a USB external HDD/SSD will be immediately bootable without the need of any recovery process.
So that if a user's source HDD/SSD becomes dysfunctional for any reason - he or she will have at hand a bootable HDD/SSD that will return their system to a bootable fully functional state in virtually no time at all. Had the user cloned the contents of their source HDD/SSD to a USB external HDD/SSD (instead of an internally-connected HDD/SSD), he/she could restore their system in reasonably short order by cloning the contents of the USBEHD back to an internal HDD/SSD or, should the drive itself be removed from the external enclosure it could then be installed as the system's internal HDD/SSD - fully bootable & functional. In some (but not all) cases because of the proprietary nature of some manufacturer's PCs - desktop or laptop - the cloned USB external HDD/SSD may not be bootable when connected as a USB device although when its contents are cloned back to an internally-connected HDD/SSD that drive will, of course, be bootable. Similarly if the cloned USB external HDD/SSD can be removed from its USB enclosure and installed as an internally-connected drive in the PC it will, of course, be bootable.
It's hard to imagine a better comprehensive backup system for the vast majority of PC users than a disk-cloning system such as the one I've been describing and strongly recommend. Besides its speed of operation as indicated above the program is extremely easy to learn & use. It shouldn't take most PC users more than a few minutes to learn how to use the program.
The cost of the program is $49.99. AFAIK, the program is only available from the developer via download.
There's a 30-day trial version available at...
http://www.fssdev.com/products/free/
The trial version is slightly crippled but it should give you a good idea of how the program works.
While the trial version is basically operational in that it will "clone" the contents of one HDD or SSD to another HDD or SSD, the "destination" drive, i.e., the recipient of the clone, will be resized only to the extent of the disk size of the "source" drive, i.e., the drive that is being cloned.
For example, say you're using the trial version of the program to clone the contents of your 128 GB HDD to a 500 GB HDD. After the disk-cloning operation is completed the 500 GB HDD will contain the contents of the 128 GB HDD, however, only a 128 GB partition will be created on the 500 GB HDD; the remaining disk space on that "destination" drive will constitute "unallocated" disk space - disk space that can later be partitioned/formatted or, (if using a third-party utility such as Partition Magic or EASEUS Partition Manager), the created 128 GB can be "expanded" so as to include the unallocated disk space thus creating a 500 GB partition on the destination HDD.
Using the licensed version of Casper there would not be this sort of limitation. Should the user choose, the full disk space of the destination HDD would be utilized to contain the cloned contents of the source HDD so that there would be no "unallocated" disk space on the destination HDD. However should the user wish he/she would also have an option to create whatever size partition he or she desires on the destination HDD, the only limitation being that the size (disk-space) allotted to that partition be sufficient to hold the cloned data contents.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram