why do people clone hard-drives instead of copy/paste?

[BlueDogAnchorite]

Is it just because it's quicker? due to it being one image file?
I read it can copy hidden and in use files also. Well... I always set my drives to have no hidden files and I will not use anything when I am copying.

Perhaps this is more useful in an office environment, where there should not be full access to hidden files and downtime due to avoiding certain files usage during cloning would be mroe of a problem?

 

[johnb35]

If you don't clone it, the drive won't boot. Plain and simple.

 

[StrangleHold]

Yeah, you cant just copy and paste a bootable harddrive.

 

[larsch]

There will always be locked system files, even if you don't have any applications running.

If it will boot or not depends on what you do. A formatted primary partition set as active will be bootable.

 

[voyagerfan99]

Boot managers aren't copied and pasted. You need to clone them or do fresh installs.

 

[larsch]

Windows' boot loader is copied like any normal file (ntldr/bootmgr)