[SOLVED] cloning

[PDN]

My C drive is 476 GB but has an image and other material on it.. The target is the same but has an image on it.
Am I ok to shrink both the drives then clone the part of the C drive I want to use to the 1'2 of the target drive without the image?
Or will Macrium , using an image do the same job as a clone as is?

 

[USAFRet]

My C drive is 476 GB but has an image and other material on it.. The target is the same but has an image on it.
Am I ok to shrink both the drives then clone the part of the C drive I want to use to the 1'2 of the target drive without the image?
Or will Macrium , using an image do the same job as a clone ass is?

Need to see a screencap of your Disk Management window.

What is the size/make/model of the new drive?

 

[PDN]

I do not see where I can upload an attachment to show disc management.

My new drive is a Samsung 500GB TI7 external drive. I have two of them and they are identical. I am trying to set up so I can recover a macrium image when necessary and clone to new metal if I have to get the hard drive replaced. One external drive has an image and the other has an image plus photos, music, etc.
My C drive is 500GBamsung 860 Evo-all are formatted NTFS although the external drives came through as exfat..
Obviously am new to this and have been watching YouTube.

 

[Lafong]

You can't directly upload a picture. You need to upload the picture elsewhere and then post a link to that location in this thread.

Typical tactics with Macrium, but it is flexible:

Make a single "full" image file of ALL partitions on the boot drive. It will have an .mrimg extension and will be quite large. Roughly 60 percent of the size of the occupied space on the selected partitions.

Save that file to some totally different drive. Could be internal or external.

Have a backup of that .mrimg file just as you would any other valuable file. Make a new one periodically.

When you install Macrium, your first task should be to make "rescue media" on a USB stick from its menus that will allow you to boot your PC and access Macrium and restore that .mrimg file IF your boot drive drops dead and you cannot boot by normal means.

To restore, you would mount your replacement drive, boot from the USB stick to get to Macrium, and then restore the image to the replacement drive via Macrium menus.

You can make an image in 6 or 7 mouse pokes using defaults. Restoration is a bit more complicated.

 

[USAFRet]

I do not see where I can upload an attachment to show disc management.

My new drive is a Samsung 500GB TI7 external drive. I have two of them and they are identical. I am trying to set up so I can recover a macrium image when necessary and clone to new metal if I have to get the hard drive replaced. One external drive has an image and the other has an image plus photos, music, etc.
My C drive is 500GBamsung 860 Evo-all are formatted NTFS although the external drives came through as exfat..
Obviously am new to this and have been watching YouTube.

For backup Images, no problem.

Select all partitions - Image this drive.
Tell it where to save that Image.

Also, create a Macrium Rescue USB.
Stash this away somewhere safe. I have one stored in the bottom of the PC case. Can't get lost or accidentally overwritten.


Macrium Images (Full/Incremental/Differential) are the basis for my whole backup routine, across all my house systems.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[PDN]

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsWGwJ7nvcK2gc8X51v1YxFW2FI06Q?e=m6yUNw
I think I placed a link here of my disc management; I did not know how. Is this forum over the head of an unskilled user?
I have 2 similar external drives-one has an image and the other an image plus material like photos etc.

I can image to Macrium free and recover as I have at least a dozen times. I keep an image in two external drives disconnected to avoid infection if system is hit. External drives are Samsung TI7 and pc is Samsung Evo 860..
Data is on two flash drives kept on two places securely.

I have never worked with disc management.
If Macrium image can transfer an image to bare metal in case of drive failure I am all set.
*If I need to clone to do so, I need help. I cloned successfully but it consumed the target as it should but I was not aware it would.
I wondered if I could shrink drives so cloning would not consume an entre drive?
I can shrink a drive and create a simple volume using YouTube.

 

[USAFRet]

Using a Macrium RescueUSB, you can apply an Image to any bare metal drive of sufficient size.

You boot from this RescueUSB, Click on Restore, tell it where the Image is, and what drive to apply it to.
Works like a charm, I've had to use it after an SSD failed.

Create your RescueUSB in the Macrium client, under 'Other Tasks...'

Cloning is for changing drives right now.
Imaging is for backup purposes, exactly as you are doing.

 

[PDN]

I have the rescue media, thanks. That is what I used to restore an image.
Glad to hear I can use an image to restore to bare metal.

One question, if you clone a drive, do you consume the entire target drive, or can you reduce sizes with disc management and still have room on the external target hard drive. It is hard to believe you lose an entire external hard drive just for one clone! This is what I do not understand about cloning.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, cloning consumes the entire drive.
You can probably manipulate the resulting size.
But this is not what cloning is for.

Buy a new SSD, want to transfer the entirety of the current C drive to the new SSD, and being able to boot up the new SSD.
Then reformat the old drive.

That is what cloning is for.

Images are for safekeeping of backups.

 

[PDN]

I thought I had read that Macrium's rescue media enabled you to do as the clone does. using the image.
II guess I am in for a third drive to clone only.
Better to hear the facts and adapt.
Thank you all for your advice.

I just read this at the Macrium site.:
Macrium Reflect is a bare-metal, full disaster recovery program. You don't have to get the system to a working state first and then restore the backup to finish the process.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, you can clone with the Macrium Rescue USB.

But again, be aware of what cloning is and how it is different than Imaging.
Unless you are swapping drives, you do NOT need a clone.

An Image, or series of Images works muh much better as a backup tool.

 

[PDN]

I am referring to swapping drives in case of failure.
I see different points of view; free vs paid, redeploy, rescue media performing imaging as cloning would.
It is confusing for an unskilled user.
Macrium reads as though their rescue media is unique and can act as cloning with bare metal.
I really do not know, at my level.
I think cloning for bare metal is the safe way.

 

[USAFRet]

Swapping in case of fail.

This is where the backup comes into play.

You can, of course, make a clone and stash that away.
But you DON'T make that clone to an external. That will not be bootable.

An Image saved to that external...You simply swap in a new drive, and recover that Image to this new blank drive.


And a clone is a single snapshot in time.
An Image can also be supplanted with Incremental or Differential images.
In effect, you can keep a history, recoverable in any state over the last XX days/weeks.

 

[USAFRet]

This is how I do mine routine.

For me, a full clone is not an option.
Multiple drives would mean multiple clones.

A whole bunch of Images, saved in a single folder tree.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[PDN]

Is this functional? Swap drives>use the rescue media to boot to macrium and select a source drive?
Image to the new target drive? I don't have to format this new drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Is this functional? Swap drives>use the rescue media to boot to macrium and select a source drive?
Image to the new target drive? I don't have to format this new drive?

A Full drive Image, residing on some other storage device.

Put in a new blank replacement drive
Boot from your Macrium Rescue USB
Restore
Tell it where the Image is, and what drive to apply that Image to.
Go.

The drive does not have to be formatted first.

Yes, this works
Yes, I've personally done this. Both in testing, and after a failed drive.

 

[PDN]

I appreciate your help because now when my drive goes, and it will, I know what to do. Thank you so much. Peter