What is the difference between cloning and imaging a disk

Both hard drive cloning and hard drive imaging create an exact copy of your hard disk including the files that are there on the drive. They also create an exact record of the master boot record as well.

So, what exactly are these differences? The process of copying all the contents of a hard drive to any other other desired drive in an uncompressed format is called disk cloning. A disk cloning software enables you to create a one-to-one copy of one hard drive onto another hard drive.

You can have only one clone per hard drive. Disk imaging is the process of compressing your hard drive including your operating system and other data in the form of an image.

Again, like disk cloning, a disk image also contains all the information required to boot the operating system. But unlike a disk clone, you can store several disk images on a single hard drive. In this table, we have differentiated both hard drive cloning and hard drive imaging in a more concise and digestible way.

So, if you are running short on time and want to get a grasp of concepts, you can go through this table. You can only have one clone on one drive at a time since cloning creates an exact copy of a hard drive.

Circumstances when each of these can be used Best suited when creating multiple backups of your OS and encompassing files Best suited when upgrading a hard drive or when you need a medium for fast recovery, for instance, when you have a hard drive that is failing.

Or, someone must have suggested either of these options to you. In the event you find yourself running out of disk space , you decide to upgrade to a new flash drive from your old mechanical drive. Normally, you would reinstall the Windows operating system along with all the programs that existed on your previous hard drive. Instead, you can image your drive and put it directly on your flash drive. What next? Pop in your flash drive, install everything. However, the disk image needs to be applied to the hard drive to work.

You can't restore a hard drive by placing the disk image files on it; it needs to be opened and installed on the drive with an imaging program. Unlike cloned drives, a single hard drive can store several disk images on it.

Disk images can also be stored on optical media and flash drives. When you apply a disk image to a hard drive, you're creating a copy of the original contents of the drive.

Disk images are usually used for restoring a hard drive's previous contents or transferring contents to a new hard drive. However, you can use a disk image to create a copy of the source hard drive on a second hard drive, making it a clone of the original drive.

Dan Stone started writing professionally in , specializing in education, technology and music. He is a web developer for a communications company and previously worked in television. By Dan Stone. My clones take about 30 min.

I do this every month between 3 rotating HDD. This way I always have 2 backups. In the long run an external HDD would also turn out to be much cheaper. Soon after, my hard drives completely fails — for whatever reason. That is exactly one of the main things imaging backup programs are designed for. Thank you, Leo. This is a very puzzling question I have been asking myself for years, and never found the answer to. Years of using the paid version of Macrium Reflect, and reading their manuals and forum, I may add… Thanks also to the commenters who explained how they use cloning to be sure their backup is working.

That was certainly illuminating. By the way, making sure your system disk backup will work if you need it is one of the most irritating and overlooked problems… You once wrote an article on the subject, and if I remember correctly, your conclusion was that there was almost no way to simulate fully a restore operation for verification purposes… Hence the point of cloning.

I actually use it for the entire month. I then make a clone on a third HDD and do the same. After the month, I use the first HDD to make a clone. Also I do not need to use the same size or type of drive, even SSD drives. Speaking of defragmentation, here is an interesting discussion on the Macrium Reflect forum by people who image for backup, of course, as opposed to cloning :.

The gist of the matter being : if you want to keep your images quick and small, you should defragment just after the last incremental and before the next full image, and not in-between a series of incrementals. Some regulars that populated it were obviously very knowledgeable users, being in charge of IT in professional settings, and sharing their very useful experience. I have found this article and discussion very interesting, but it seems that the failure of a system in all scenarios discussed, assume a mechanical failure or breakdown.

Would it not be beneficial to do a complete re-install of your operating system and software, then copy the files that you have backed up to the new system. For this reason I back up my documents, pictures, music, address book , emails and any other files that I have created. This takes up less space in back-up too. Am I being too simplistic. Is my method ok for a single home computer? Your method would work, and it is the most sure method, but it would mean a lot more work on your part.

Cloning before a virus or software issue gives us a clone that we can use to clone back to our compromised main hard drive. Ransomeware, malware, and software malfunctions are gone after this reverse cloning. Without backups, OS reinstalling will likely be necessary. If I am not mistaken it is doing fragmentation at the same at the same time of cloning.

A backup image can still really help in the case of malware. You may not have a lot of data, but you do still have programs… even your operating system is a program.

So with an image you can restore to a known version of your machine if anything goes wrong. Back in early summer with my ik and 8 ram on a Seagate 1TB and the threat of Win 10 and my more knowledgeable son-in-law, my font of extra HDs, we were trying to move Win 7 to a GIG. S-i-l had always used imaging and supplied Acronis Rescue V8 but we had problems so having access to the version we tried it and still had problems when I suggested cloning which I should have known would be impossible.

Anyway I proceeded and it was trying but claimed the image too large so I went back into Explorer deleting everything possible and hit a mine full of Sys. Restore files. There were some initial boot problems on 7 which the chkdisc utility fixed up. Today everything is ticking along perfectly. My wife uses Win 7 offline for all her graphics work in Photoshop and I occasionally go into creaky Win 10 which works like a sundial on an overcast day.

Leo, Seems to me that cloning may have an advantage over imaging since you only copy to a new HDD and then swap it whereas imaging requires to copy and then the extra risky? I really liked your article, and your definition on cloning and imaging made more sense than most explanations I read around the internet.

However, it seems like most people consider that the difference between cloning and imaging is that the first makes a copy to a drive, ready to boot, and the other one creates the compressed file.

And even explanations made from backup software companies seem to have this definition in mind. For example, how can I make a clone of my drive to a compressed file? I know of software that creates images…but I want the Exact copy. Maybe they do it, but call it Imaging. How would I know?? I also never heard of any software making Images directly to a disk… How can we do that? Lets say i lost all the partition on my disk and now its just blank no systeme nothing!

You can try one of the data recovery tools available first. A tool like Recuva may help, for example, but there are others. You may not be able to image, since that tends to assume a working file system. You MAY be able to clone. I would assume something like Macrium Reflect is easier for the common person I have used it in the past and it worked.

I tend to use Clonezilla for making a image of my primary boot drive SSD to a image file on another hard drive I have if I need to restore the main boot drive I just restore it from that file. I am currently using Linux Mint v You can boot from the rescue disk and run the backup program to create a system image or clone. Clarification: yes, you do need to use Macrium to create its rescue media, but you can do that on any machine. I use Macrium Reflect for this and also for creating image files on external disks for offsite and local storage.

If you backup to an internal drive, you should immediately copy it to an external drive. Your internal backup is susceptible ro many of the same problems, electrical, malware and more as your system drive.

Since solid state drives do not require defragmentation, cloning seems to have a time saving advantage over imaging. I believe those who have used VeraCrypt or a similar program to create hidden files or a hidden partition on a hard drive must use a clone program if they want to back that up, since the files are in what appears to be unformatted space on the drive.