Drive cloning question

[Sumotku]

I have used Acronis True Image to great success in the past, creating cloned drives and changing them out. I now would like to create a laptop drive clone repository on a single external drive, as my laptops ranks are growing. I picture plugging in a USB external drive (the clone library) into my workstation, then plugging in a bare drive using a powered IDE/SATA to USB adapter and running Acronis. How does that sound?

 

[corkyg]

What you propose does not follow the definition of cloning. With a large external, you might try partitioning it and cloning smaller drives to the indidual partitions or virtual drives.

To do this with TI, you would use manual mode cloning, and not destroy the partitions on the target disk, but clone each drive to its own partition.

For multiple drives, I would opt for backing up then smaller drives to the larger and then restoring as needed.

 

[RebateMonger]

Have you looked at Windows Home Server for automatically making image backups of all those laptops? It'd likely be a LOT less work to manage your backups, and all the backups can be put onto a single drive (or drive pool). Furthermove, single-instance-storage of files will likely cut down on the size of all those backups.

 

[Sumotku]

If I have this right, it'll work if partition/drive groups are created, segmenting the external and isolating one drive per partition. This clone library will be used for a few other folks as well, so the data backup is a separate issue. Storage costs alone are motivating me, space is so cheap now. I'll look further into WHS, but the last thing I read was that it was causing data loss itself, a bug in the latest release. Hopefully that's resolved.

 

[Dahak]

the data bug in whs is primarily if you are Opening and Editing the files DIRECTLY off the whs share, it does not corrupt or lose the data being backed up there
Details

but back to original issue, if the external drive is just storing a backup of the laptops you could just create folders for each laptop and store them as a true image file instead of a full drive clone, depending on if you need direct access

 

[Sumotku]

Not exactly sure what direct access means, read/write access to files within a clone? If so, no. Can the true image file be applied to a formatted disk to recreate the fully functional system, as I'd do with a clone operation? Not too clear on the difference.

 

[spikespiegal]

A 'True Image' file likely refers to taking the entire drive (or partition) you want to clone/copy, and converting it to a large file (or group of 2gig files) instead.

This is normal operation with these type of programs (paragon does the same thing), and in some instances is preferable because you can compress the contents of the drive just like a ZIP file. You can also copy those files to another repository just like any large file.

I've found image files to work best when it comes to working with cloning entire drives -vs- individual partitions. Doesn't sound like an issue in your case.

Also, not to preach, but cloning a HD to an image file or another drive is typically easy. It's restoring in the event of emergency where you realize problems. Always test portables on occasion to make sure your restoration procedure will actually work.

 

[Dahak]

Originally posted by: Sumotku
Not exactly sure what direct access means, read/write access to files within a clone? If so, no. Can the true image file be applied to a formatted disk to recreate the fully functional system, as I'd do with a clone operation? Not too clear on the difference.

Direct access means that it will look exactly like it is in the laptop, you can go to your partition of laptop 1 for example and see all the files and folders.

where as a true image file, like spikespiegal indicated, is usually 1 file usually ending in .tib (if drive is formatted ntfs, or multiple 2gb file if fat32) that can be compressed and usually takes up less room on the drive. If needed you can mount the file in explorer to access the files in it as well.

if you need to restore the laptop or machine, you would uses the recovery function in true image and select the true image file and then select your destination drive and it restores it like if you would have done a clone