Software to Clone Hard Drives

Hi all Newbie here so please bear with me.

I want to backup my main hard drive in the PC to an external drive that i have, ideally i want to fully clone the drive with everything and have the facility to run a daily backup to prevent any sort of data loss

What software can i use, needs to be simple for a newbie to use.

Thanks

Take a look at Macrium Reflect.

I have used AOMEI Backupper with great success. I periodically clone my desktop to an external hard drive. And I've cloned my netbook to USB as well using AOMEI's USB option. I even cloned back to the netbook hard drive with success. All you do is pick source drive and destination drive. It's all really simple. You don't need to chose sector by sector, but if it's a SSD, then use the alignment option.

I just used Samsung's Data Migration for my new SSD. Worked like a charm. Now I'm nerding out over how fast my old gaming PC is

Just for your info Malwarebytes flagged AOMEI Backupper website as a malicious web site. Probably okay though, I downloaded it anyway as I have had failures with Macrium. I will let you know how it goes.

_Pete_ said:

Just for your info Malwarebytes flagged AOMEI Backupper website as a malicious web site. Probably okay though, I downloaded it anyway as I have had failures with Macrium. I will let you know how it goes.

Click to expand...

That's nuts. I wonder why? I do know the software is Made In China, but it's not malware and I have used it many times. In fact, I just used it a few days ago in preparation for a complete Windows reinstall since it's due. I needed a way to back up all my crap in one go.

I see a lot of people use Malwarebytes and that can have a risk potential of only going by one opinion and then your definition-based anti-virus is not a catch all. I use Herdprotect portable as a scanner. They don't offer the download right now anymore, but the portable version can be had at Softpedia's website. Herdprotect uses 63 anti-virus engines and the cloud. Of course, the risk of false positives are elevated, but with such a vast scan you can filter through the results, do research and remove anything you think looks suspicious. In addition to Herdprotect I use Freefixer. It will list all the crap on your Comp. and you can click each item and do research on it from their website. I'd say my highly configured Sandboxie for my browser is my first line of defense. I also use Shade Sandbox for Thunderbird since I just use the free version of Sandboxie. I don't want to commit to a yearly fee. If it was a one time license deal I'd go for it. And that's saying a lot because I don't believe in paying for anti-virus software. I've always used free solutions and they have been pretty good. Bitdefender Free is pretty damn decent. It's cloud-based and it will stop you from visiting malware laden websites. Bitdefender Free will catch a lot of crap and it seems to stop Windows debugging or something with debugging which can be a malware vector. But that poses a problem if your into game hacks and such. I ran the Gentool for Command & Conquer Generals Zero Hour and it wouldn't run do to Gentool using debugging.

Now a days I don't even use a malware solution. Just Sandboxie and watch my system with the program Spy the Spy. In Spy the Spy I added the folders to monitor of; Windows, appdata, and program data. It can be a little PITA when you install software since it will inform you of the new files added, but on an install you can just exit Spy the Spy until the install completes and turn it back on again. That is you trust the program you are installing, and that's where Virus Total comes in at. Pretty much the same thing as Herdprotect except Virus Total is an online file scanner.

Anyway.. LOL

Mungo2007 said:

Hi all Newbie here so please bear with me.

I want to backup my main hard drive in the PC to an external drive that i have, ideally i want to fully clone the drive with everything and have the facility to run a daily backup to prevent any sort of data loss

What software can i use, needs to be simple for a newbie to use.

Thanks

Click to expand...

I think you're confusing "cloning" with "data backup".

To clone a drive is to create an identical version of what's in your hard drive. The purpose is to have a replacement drive that you can swap out the one in your computer to boot. You do that when you want to use another drive in place of your existing hard drive. Example: upgrading to a SSD drive.

Similar to cloning, "Imaging" lets you create a boot version of the system hard drive. You'll need to create a boot media like in a USB or DVD, which you use to boot up your computer to restore the system hard drive from the image. I use this method systematically and religiously. It'd saved me a couple of times when some bad virus situation occurred.

Data backup is to copy your data, like photos, video, documents, musics, etc. to an external drive. In case your HD clash or you accidentally alter or delete your data, you will have a copy to restore it from.

Cloning takes a lot longer because you're creating an image of the entire drive (the paid version of Macrium allows you to incrementally add to pre-existing image file). Backup is a lot faster because you're only backing up the new and/or changed file. Depending on the software, some let you keep different versions of the same file. Other would use the latest version and overwrite the old one.

I use Macrium Reflect Free for cloning and imaging, and SyncBackFree for backup. I have use Windows 10 FileHistory for a while. The scheduled backup worked fine but I found it a bit too complicated when it comes time to restore.

yeah,i use macrium as well.keeps it simple for this old guy.lol.having an identical clone of your drive makes it easy to get your computer back up and running in the event of misadventure with your boot drive.

aldan said:

yeah,i use macrium as well.keeps it simple for this old guy.lol.having an identical clone of your drive makes it easy to get your computer back up and running in the event of misadventure with your boot drive.

Click to expand...

Clone requires you to swap out the drive. Restore from image uses the existing drive.

I consider the latter a lot easier. I just create image to my regular external backup drive periodically. When my system drive was attacked by virus, I just booted up the USB bootable and did restoration from the external image.

what do you mean by swap out the drive? just curious.

aldan said:

what do you mean by swap out the drive? just curious.

Click to expand...

He's saying if you have a 250GB drive and want to upgrade to a 500GB Drive you'd clone the 250 to the 500 and then remove the 250, replacing it with the 500.

okay.i use cloning software for backups.i just clone my main drive to my backup.if my main drive has a problem i boot from the backup.when i updated to an ssd i cloned my hdd to the ssd,but i kept the hdd as the backup.never had to remove it,just changed boot order in bios.

What did you do after you boot up from an external drive?
The external drive is a lot slower than the internally mounted system drive. How do you restore your internal drive to be the internal system boot up drive again?

both my drives are internal.i just boot up from the secondary drive and clone it to my primary drive to restore.ive cloned to an external drive before and the method is the same.