What's the Difference Between a Clone and an Image?

[@askleonotenboom]

For most purposes a full image of your hard drive will be exactly what you need.

[@edwardmacdonald5453]

Hi Leo, I have been a fan of yours for years and this is he first time I had the privilege of seeing you on You tube. Love your way of explaining things and will be following all of you videos . keep up the great work you are a gem. Many regards Ed

[@ltdees2362]

Hi Leo, I teach all my customers how to image their drive...this has become my requirement for tech support after purchase of my machines....my support calls have dropped almost in half and life is a little less stressful...😎 Thanks Leo!!

[@askleonotenboom]

That's awesome. Really. I know a lot of support folk image immediately when they take a machine in for work, but pushing that out to your customers as a requirement is a wonderful bit of education. 👍

[@joshz9230]

Thank you for your explanation, this was very helpful.

[@TonyDeConcini]

Great explanation. Thanks for this. I have an issue with a hard drive - a mechanical 2TB that WORKS fine but I want to migrate to an SSD of the same size. However, there ARE bad sectors on the HDD. I'm imaging this drive to an external SSD but want to restore it to a new Crucial SATA internal drive to replace the HDD. MY concern is will all those BAD sectors on the HDD wind up being bad sectors on the new SSD internal.? Or since bad sectors I'm assuming are a hard drive problem physically, will those bad sectors just clear upon restoring the image to the new SSD which won't have a physical problem or what IS going to happen? Everything I use on the HDD works - I just am hoping the SSD won't show bad sectors because they imaged from the HDD? Thanks for your very informative videos. They really help .

[@askleonotenboom]

The bad sectors will not be bad sectors. At worst, they'll be bad portions of files lost as you copy.

[@TonyDeConcini]

@@askleonotenboom Thànks loads for that info. Sincerely appreciate it. I had hoped that would be the case. I do enjoy your videos. Very informative and helpful.

[@azbaptiste]

Thank you so much Mr. Leo, this was and is the best definition, health and strength to you.

[@DearthVadar]

Srsly ur that guy when it comes to storage! 👍❤️ Thank u

[@seralvplyr]

Greatly explained. Thank you 👍

[@acreguy3156]

Clear and concise, Leo. Thanks for the great explanation. I assume this applies to SSD drives as well? My primary drives are SSD. I backup to an external disk drive using Macrium. Liked and Subscribed!!

[@askleonotenboom]

Disk type has no impact.

[@acreguy3156]

@@askleonotenboom Thanks, Leo!

[@alvinmarentes3315]

Doesn't get more cut and dry then that...Great video Leo.

[@rnjbailey2264]

Crystal clear, as always. Many thanks, Leo. W10. 2015 Dell XPS. I have an observation and a question: Recently, between an Avast upgrade that disabled Thunderbird's upgrade (!) I had to swap my 2TB C with my 2 TB cloned D. That was it: unplug, swap, reboot, clone. How does that compare with restoring from an image? Question: Using Macrium Restore (8) I am having a problem with the program not releasing when the operation is said to be 100% complete. Can cloning be implicated, by way of, say, a fault on C (I can't find any)? Presumably, D couldn't skip the faulty item, otherwise the two drives would not be identical. Thank you.

[@dorado4086]

Hello Leo, I have a problem and would really appreciate your opinion on what you would do in this situation. I've got a year old 5tb external hard drive that's showing signs that it may fail prematurely. I don't have a back up and can't afford the hefty cost of data recovery. I've got some experience using the free version of Macrium and use the image feature to back up my system regularly. Te external hard drive in question still shows up in windows and still reads and writes but is sometimes slow and has clicked randomly at times. I have also received an io error when trying to play a video. The drive is almost completely full which could be the problem? Also I only have usb 2.0 which could also be the problem? I'm thinking of using Macrium to either image or clone to a brand new drive before I do any chkdsk work. In this situation would your recommend one over the other or a different solution all together? Also is cloning or imaging faster and is one method less prone to errors than the other? Any words of wisdom would be very, very much appreciated. Kind regards - Dorado

[@askleonotenboom]

Cloniing and imaging are going to be roughly the same. Do either. IN YOUR SHOES I would actually a) get a replacement external drive and then b) COPY everything to it. No backup program for that step needed. Then, later, after everything has been safely copied, I might take extra steps. (I'd probably use the command prompt for a complete copy. SOmething like XCOPY /S D:\ E:\ where D: is the old drive and E: the new one. Use the letters that appear on your system.) Before you do so, though, educate yourself a little on XCOPY to make sure you're using it right.

[@dorado4086]

@@askleonotenboom Hi again Leo, Thank you so much for your reply! I’m currently copying the drive over to the brand new external. Before I began the copy all process though, I copied about 400gb worth of files over to another drive and then deleted those from the problem drive. This seemed to have solved the sluggish performance and also the clicking. Still I’m not taking any chances and I’m definitely following your advice. Thank you so much for everything you’re doing on this channel. I know for a fact that a ton of people are benefiting from your work here. You’re very much appreciated! Have a great day!

[@محمدالعجيري-ر5م]

Im absolutely buyin the way you answering my questions. Thank you

[@jamesjones-yn1sv]

I Leo, A great video . I have two hard drives in my intel NUC The primary drive is "C" a M2 NVME SSD 1 Tb with my WIN. 10. operating system. I have a second internal drive, "D" drive a 2.5 SATA 1Tb. capacity. Which contains data, movies, ETC. which is nearly full. I want to to replace this drive with a 2.5. SATA 2.Tb. I want to copy the old disk to the new disk and put the new one in NUC. What would you recommend cloning or imaging and what the easist software to use. thanks.

[@antoniiocaluso1071]

Having just Cloned my C: drive, using both DiskGenius, & AweClone, each DID clone all the C:drive's Program & Data...BUT...my ActCAD software "seemed" to Clone alright, but when clicking on it's .exe, it popped-up an "Error 41" window, instead. Ughhh... All the others opened fine, otherwise. Sadly, as a small-time Architectural Designer, my CAD-software is my $$$-maker, so an SSD-crash is a terrible business disrupter. Any ideas?? Or is there another of this Channel's videos to watch?? thanks!

[@hugh1390]

So what do I need to make sure and have to restore an image backup that is on an external drive? You mention on another video that you would need an identical computer. I'm thinking if my laptop failed or was stolen.

[@wintersolstice2681]

does imaging allow the backing up of the softwares in the computer, such that you dont need to reinstall it?

[@askleonotenboom]

Yes. It's a backup of EVERYTHING

[@msmax3172]

If I were to clone my PC to an SSD, can I then use that cloned SSD to add daily backups to or is that clone a static entity?

[@askleonotenboom]

Depends on the software you use, but typically it's static.

[@KBuckyRailVideo]

Thanks Leo, I just subscribed. I'm staring to have errors and problems on my 4/yo Dell with a 250gb internal SSD. A Dell diagnostic is telling me the drive is failing as it is reaching the end of its life (funny, I have a 20+ old platter external drive that still works fine!) Anyhow if it does fail completely, for the purpose of getting my computer running as it was, seamlessly and with minimal time, I'd be fine in the short term running it off an external drive. Space is not an issue. I just want to boot from the external drive and continue on like nothing happened. Disc image sounds like I would need to do something to make it work like that. Disc clone does not. Am I missing something?

[@KBuckyRailVideo]

Watching the video again, I think I've answered my own question. "overkill" is irrelevant. space is cheap. (I remember the days when a buck per megabyte was considered the rule of thumb!). I want to just boot off an external hard drive and have my computer working until I have the time to replace the internal SSD. I'm going with clone. Thank you.

[@NickCassimon]

So if I take my image and use it on a new, bigger disk, should not be a problem correct ? Thanks

[@askleonotenboom]

Correct, assuming your backup software supports it. I've done this repeatedly.

[@msmax3172]

Does an image backup contain my OS and all the settings and registry keys?

[@askleonotenboom]

Yes,

[@jameswarui321]

Can a single image be used to mount on different devices? Wonderi ng if there will be an error because one machine has different drivers from the other.

[@askleonotenboom]

Sure. The "drivers" are the backup software you use to mount it, so you'd have that in both places.

[@ncrdisabled]

have you ever heard of bravebrowser?

[@blueeyedsoulman]

Does a clone contain the desktop files as well? That's what you seem to be saying.

[@askleonotenboom]

Both contain everything.

[@blueeyedsoulman]

@@askleonotenboom I can't find it. I see program files etc. Could it be under something else? There is no file in the image backup that says "Desktop."

[@mrunit7261]

You are completely backwards on this