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Hello,
If someone wanted to clone a hard drive, is it feasible to use a External Hard drive by transferring the entire Main drive by a 3.0 USB to the External Hard drive..
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Usb1.......no.......too slow.
Usb2.......iffy.......better
Usb3.......yes......better/better.
I run a hd>hd clone monthly.......works fine.
It's not a blink of an eye thing but in 4 or 5 mins it's done.
Should had said in my original posting that my intentions are to back up or clone my hard drive in the event of a crash, so looking to duplicate my current main drive, so would it be cloning????
where you have a drive and clone it to another drive of the same size which makes the second drive an exact copy of the first drive.
Imaging a drive allows you to create an image file of a drive or partition on another drive where the drive only has to be bigger than the image. This image is not bootable like a cloned drive but it is considerably smaller and allows you to write several image files to the same drive for storage. The image is then used on a new drive should the original drive crash or can be used on the original drive should the drive be hard hit by viruses or other problems.
Should had mentioned that my intentions is to back up or clone my main drive to this other drive in the event that my main drive crashes, then should it be cloning????
A clone is an exact copy of the orig hd........bootable.
An image is a compressed copy of the orig hd......not bootable.
Pro's and con's to each method.
I use a clone because it's faster.
I have a few spare hd's and rotate the units.
Works for me.
Your call.
The clone job has to duplicate and write empty areas to the target drive so here, the clone takes much longer than an image backup.
Both satisfy slightly different goals.
Bob
The last time I tested this.
Image.......a little less than 7 mins.
Clone.......a little more than 5 mins.
Since the amount of data on the hd has grown I'll take a guess.
The image time will have gone up.
The clone time will remain the same.
The op can run their own test to see what's best for them.
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