a tip on cloning - i learned this the hard way. I keep a cloned copy on hand and up to date, windows update wise, in case i get hit by a virus, malware etc - some of the malware can take hours to eradicate, going by majorgeeks instructions.
Well, twice in a row when i would clone back to the OS drive, i'd still have the malware or whatever there, even though the cloned drive was kept without a sata data cable connected (to prevent any malware migrating to it).
I was talking to a customer who is a retired microsoft engineer, and he advised me that before cloning to any drive, he recommended wiping it three times as most cloning software when it's cloning to a drive, the software will check the target drive as it's cloning, and if it sees a file identically titled to the one it's about to clone over to the target drive, it will skip that file - that explained how the malware was still there after cloning the backup copy back to the OS drive. It also explained why clone times would vary, sometimes they'd take 28-30 minutes, others 19-21 minutes.
For what it's worth, wiping the target drive, whether the backup clone drive or the OS drive before cloning is necessary.