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Is there software to make bootable HDD backups?

Post Date: 2010-03-04
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ablahblah View Drop Down
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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Topic: Is there software to make bootable HDD backups?
    Posted: 04 Mar 2010 at 6:29pm
Is there any software out there that can make a bootable disk image backup onto a HDD? Preferably done periodically. My situation is that in the future I'm gonna get a laptop, of which I want an up to date backup of my computer, regardless of internet or not. My ideal solution is to have a secondary mirror drive. If I need to get mobile on my laptop, I would remove my "backup" mirror drive, pop it into my laptop, and go (Yes, I'm gonna add some metal and hardware so my desktop supports 2.5" drives). Why don't I just cold-swap my single current drive? I don't want to just pop my main single drive in. I want to have a backup too when I'm not mobile, and when I'm mobile, my home computer will be my fallback backup.

Basically, I want software that can create a RAID 1-like mirror, with the ability to directly boot from the mirror. By directly boot, I mean as in, I can directly remove it, insert it into another machine of which I've already installed drivers for on my HDD, and immediately boot from there with nothing else.


I've considered Norton Ghost and I've also looked at BounceBack Ultimate. Norton Ghost I'd be able to nab a lot easier (don't ask Smile, and NO I don't mean illegally obtaining it Unhappy) Problem is, I'm beginning to assume that their so-called "bootable disk-images" are not really bootable by themselves. Instead, you'd pop in a recovery disk to read the drive and then start from there. What I need is a program that can mirror my drive in real time, while making it bootable without any extra stuff, just simple detachment and attachment to another computer.

And, RAID 1 mirror drives are unbootable if they're independant/separate/not-in-RAID, yes?


Edited by ablahblah - 04 Mar 2010 at 6:47pm
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Posts: 36758 		  Quote DST4ME Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 05 Mar 2010 at 1:21am
you can't move an os install from one machine to another, and then boot from it.

imaging software, will make an image backup, but that backup is not bootable, you will have to use whatever software that created the image to restore from it, be it norton ghost or acronis imaging, for this reason we recommend that people clone the HDD instead of making an image backup, also images don't work every time.

yes you can't backup a raid to a single drive then boot of off it.

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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 05 Mar 2010 at 3:15pm
Ohh I see now. Hmm, I could just keep backupping to another HDD then, sure, and then just clone my drive to an internal drive when I need to go.

Any good cloning software out there? 
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Posts: 36758 		  Quote DST4ME Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 05 Mar 2010 at 5:02pm
you can follow my clone guide here, it shows you what app to use and how to use it to clone

read the guide and pay attention, if you clone to an internal HDD, the you have to make sure that HDD is not connected when the pc boots up after the clone is done, otherwise the clone will not be bootable.

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Posts: 2312 		  Quote ablahblah Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 05 Mar 2010 at 10:53pm
How long does it take on average though? Preferably I don't want something that takes hours and hours to clone Geek

I'll probably just create a simple boot account that just has programs if i need my laptop instantly, but if I go somewhere I need all my files without an entire night of waiting.
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Posts: 36758 		  Quote DST4ME Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 05 Mar 2010 at 10:55pm
if you want just the files and no apps/games/os you can move that from pc to pc, but if it has os or app or games then you can't move it.

if you keep a light HDD1 (40GB) then it should take like 20 minutes to clone, the more data there is to clone/copy, the longer it takes, no matter what you use.

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