Does Windows software exist that can update a cloned hard drive image "on the fly"?

[catboy]

I want to know if software exists, for a Windows PC, that can update a cloned image of a hard drive "on the fly,"without having to re-clone the whole hard drive again. Software that requires me to re-clone my hard drive from scratch every time I change the data wouldn't fulfill my purpose.

My plan is to get a an external USB hard drive and then clone my internal hard drive onto it.

My reason for doing that would be so that if a virus or hardware failure makes my OS stop working, I won't lose my data and I won't have to re-install all of my programs. Instead, I will just copy the cloned image from my external hard drive onto an internal hard drive and have my computer function exactly as it did before the virus or hardware failure took it down.

Can any Windows software packages update a cloned hard drive image "on the fly?" If so, what are their names?

 

[TerryMathews]

I want to know if software exists, for a Windows PC, that can update a cloned image of a hard drive "on the fly,"without having to re-clone the whole hard drive again. Software that requires me to re-clone my hard drive from scratch every time I change the data wouldn't fulfill my purpose.

My plan is to get a an external USB hard drive and then clone my internal hard drive onto it.

My reason for doing that would be so that if a virus or hardware failure makes my OS stop working, I won't lose my data and I won't have to re-install all of my programs. Instead, I will just copy the cloned image from my external hard drive onto an internal hard drive and have my computer function exactly as it did before the virus or hardware failure took it down.

Can any Windows software packages update a cloned hard drive image "on the fly?" If so, what are their names?

Windows backup does this automatically.

 

[ForumMaster]

ever hear of RAID 1?

 

[Engineer]

ever hear of RAID 1?

See this from the OP....

My reason for doing that would be so that if a virus or hardware failure makes my OS stop working, I won't lose my data and I won't have to re-install all of my programs.

RAID 1 would work for hardware failures but not for a virus, etc. RAID 1 is redundancy, not a backup.

 

[Lifted]

Last I checked Macrium Reflex will also do this (master image + incremental updates).

 

[Kaido]

Last I checked Macrium Reflex will also do this (master image + incremental updates).

Yup, they added that feature in version 5:

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Instructions:

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50081.aspx

If you need to shrink first (to say fit on a smaller SSD), EaseUS Partition Master will do it:

http://download.cnet.com/EaseUS-Partition-Master-Free-Edition/3000-2248_4-10863346.html?tag=mncol;8

Just make sure that you unmount the drive after cloning so that it doesn't start indexing the drive for searches and whatnot. An easier way to do this is to buy a large 2TB portable or 4TB desktop backup drive and clone to image files. Then you can setup a schedule in Macrium to clone nightly so that you have a couple backups available at all times, then use the BootCD or another computer to restore.

 

[catboy]

Thanks for the great help.

I use Windows XP, so I do not have access to the feature "Windows Backup."

I was reading the Macrium site and it says:

The only disadvantage to using incremental images is that all files must be present in the image set. If any intermediate incremental images are missing, it will not be possible to restore the system to the latest backup.

Does that mean that each new incremental image behaves like a link in the chain, and that if one of the links gets damaged or lost, the whole chain becomes useless?

If that is what it means, wouldn't that chain become unwieldy eventually, after a large number of incremental images have been made?

In that case, is it best to combine the full image image + incremental images into a new full image on a regular basis, in order to reset the unwieldiness of the chain?

 

[Dahak]

Does that mean that each new incremental image behaves like a link in the chain, and that if one of the links gets damaged or lost, the whole chain becomes useless?

While I have not used Macrium, based on other software that does incremental
Yes, you would need all bits, the benefit is the incremental is a faster and smaller backup than the normal. For example, the full backup will take 3hrs and is 120GB, an incrimental would be 10 minutes at 20GB

If that is what it means, wouldn't that chain become unwieldy eventually, after a large number of incremental images have been made?

In that case, is it best to combine the full image image + incremental images into a new full image on a regular basis, in order to reset the unwieldiness of the chain?

Possibly, but usually you would setup a full backup every week or two and then the incremental will go from that, so that from 1 backup there would be 6 incremental from that full backup

again adjusted for the backup plan that suits you. You could say do a full backup once a month and the do the incremental once a week, or as I mentioned above, do a weekly full and daily incremental.

 

[Mushkins]

What you're looking to do is dangerous in and of itself, and nearly defeats the purpose of the backup in the first place.

If you're updating that image that often, and keeping the drive with the image on it perpetually connected to your PC, odds are you're going to copy that virus to the backup as well.

All it takes is for the backup/reimage software to take another snapshot *after* infection but *before* the system becomes unusable. You cannot trust a backup made in the manner you intend to be a good clean backup of your system.

 

[TSDible]

What you're looking to do is dangerous in and of itself, and nearly defeats the purpose of the backup in the first place.

If you're updating that image that often, and keeping the drive with the image on it perpetually connected to your PC, odds are you're going to copy that virus to the backup as well.

All it takes is for the backup/reimage software to take another snapshot *after* infection but *before* the system becomes unusable. You cannot trust a backup made in the manner you intend to be a good clean backup of your system.

I didn't read the OPs request as a "real time" solution... just that when it was decided to do a new image, they didn't have to go through the whole cloning process again...

Seems reasonable.

 

[glugglug]

Macrium has 3 modes
* Full backup (copies everything)
* Differential (copies changes since the last Full Backup)
* Incremental (copies changes since the last backup of any type.

Incremental is like the chain metaphor you described, where the tiny file made each run is like a link in the chain.

Differential requires only the file generated when the differential backup was run and the Full backup that it is a differential from. The file will of course be bigger than incremental, but likely still much smaller than Full.