Jay, you always do an excellent job in educating me, computer wise. So explain this to me:

I read where you create clones in addition to backups. How do you do this? Can it be done using the Acronis Rescue Media disk?

And why do you clone a drive.....what is the advantage vs backing up a drive?

Thanks in advance.......

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http://barrypatch.net

The advantage of a clone, is that if you have a drive fail you can replace it with the clone and boot right back to where you were when you made the clone. It is an exact duplicate of the drive you are making the clone of.

To go into more detail let's say that the system boot drive went up on a cloud of smoke. I go to my BIOS and set the clone as the boot drive and don't skip a beat. Going with just an image I have to order a new drive and wait for arrival before I can restore the image and be running. Waiting for a new drive can be days. With a clone it is a matter of less than a minute.

Yes, while I can't speak of Acronis 2017, 2018 and later offers a clone option under the Tools menu. It is best if the system and clone drive are of the same specs such as size and both mounted as internals. In my case I have two 500 GB M.2 SSD drives mounted. One is my system drive and the other the clone. System drive fails and I just go to the clone. I could set it up in the BIOS where both the system and clone drives are in the boot list and I'd probably never know there was an issue. That fact is exactly why I don't have both in my normal boot order as I want to know if there is a problem.

The operation to do a clone is just as easy as an image in Acronis. You pick the source and destination and just let it do its thing. Through Acronis it can be pretty much automatic or, as I do, you can do it manually.

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David & Jay - Thanks for the explanations. I can certainly see the advantage of having a clone. But that now begs the question.....why not always do a clone and never a backup? What is the advantage of a backup versus a clone?

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Going to my clone would always be my first choice but what happens if there is a power surge or something that destroys my system and the clone is also gone? In such a case I have my images to fall back to on a new drive.

Both methods are valid but a clone will almost always be the faster solution as no rebuilding of the system drive is needed as the clone is already there and waiting. My primary backup is the clone but that clone is internal so is also in danger of a totally fatal system failure. This is one of the reasons why I 'hide' my internal backup drives both clone and image by killing the drive letter. Since Windows does not even see these drives it is less likely that an infection would cause harm to these drives... Still possible but less likely.

Having backups is a form of system security so let's look at it that way. Both MBAM and Defender are decent but better when used in tandem. The backups work the same way. It is a matter of layers. With security if a bad guy gets through the first layer, Defender, it then has to deal with MBAM. They are a sort of tag team. Backups work the same way as to layers. My clone is my first layer; second is my internal image; the third layer is my external images. Security and backups work the same as they are both part redundancy and part proactive.

I do a clone any time I do a change to my system such as a new major install. I only do my images after it is proven that "Patch Tuesday" updates are OK; in other words once a month for images and, usually, more often as to the clone.

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Jay, you said it is best to do the clone on an internal drive (of same size). Can you not do it on an external drive and then make that drive the first in boot order?

In my Win 10 computer, my primary drive is a 512GB SSD, whereas my 2nd internal drive is a 2 TB HDD. So is it even feasible to do a clone of my SSD?

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

You can do a clone internal or external. With my setup it is just better for me to do internal.

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For my clarification, could I use TWO external drives, one a backup and the other a clone?

Would it be feasible to occasionally format the cloned external drive then re clone your system to the newly formatted drive?

I like your idea about have both a backup(using Acronis for example) AND a cloned drive.

All my backups/clones are to external drives. I do a Windows image every Saturday to an external SSD drive, then I reboot and do a clone to a different External drive that is an USB C type enclosure. It is a M.2 drive of the exact same make and size of the drive I am cloning so it can be swapped out if needed.

If I understand what you are saying, since my primary drive is a 512GB SSD, I should probably get another identical internal drive and then put it in an external enclosure for cloning purposes. Then I could do a swap out if needed.

But would it not work if I cloned to an external HDD and then booted from it if my primary drive failed?

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

That would work ONLY if your system allows booting from that external drive.

Turns out, my system does allow booting from an external drive. I used Macrium to create a clone of my SSD onto an external HDD. Then when I went into my BIOS, this clone drive was shown as Windows Boot Manager (Storejet), where Storejet was the model of my Transcend HDD.

But then after doing all of this, I read the following on the Macrium website:
Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive. This is a restriction imposed by Windows. If you clone your system disk to a USB connected external drive then, to boot your clone, the physical disk must be removed from the USB caddy and attached to your Motherboard SATA port.

Is this statement true? If so, I guess my efforts were wasted.

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http://barrypatch.net

I would think the best way to find if true would be to just go ahead and give it a try...

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Didn't work even though it was listed in boot manager. Error was "inaccessible boot drive".

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Hmmm, I really didn't expect that to be the result.

If you really want to go with a clone backup I would have to suggest that you add another internal drive to use as the destination for the backup. While your system drive is an SSD I doubt that the clone destination needs to be so as long as the destination is large enough to hold everything on the system drive.

It is still quite likely that your current clone is good but would need to be mounted as an internal to actually boot.

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All I'm trying to find out at this point......is the following statement true or false:
Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive. This is a restriction imposed by Windows.

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http://barrypatch.net

From what I've read the above statement is and is not true. Yes, Windows CAN boot from an external USB drive but, sometimes, it isn't happy about doing so. Think about it... When you boot to recovery media that is a flash drive you are essentially booting Windows via USB.

I have found sources through some searches that indicate you will have a better chance of booting external by using the BIOS boot menu instead of actually setting the external as a boot device. There should be an F# key that will bring up a BIOS boot menu listing all bootable possibilities. It is quite possible that some will work and others not. The best chances are to pick options that are listed as a boot loader although optical drives don't really care one way or the other for the most part.

The bottom line is that you were able to create a clone backup. I don't use Macrium so can't comment on reliability but the clone is there. The only real test as to the clone being good would be to internally mount the drive to check by making it the first boot device or using the BIOS boot menu.

You may also want to try making a clone using Acronis instead of Macrium.

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I'm going to go way out on a limb here and speculate on the reason it wouldn't boot...

Based on the error, the boot manager configuration data is being read on the external USB drive that you cloned from your system drive, but that configuration data is pointing to a "location" that differs from the drive you are booting from. If the external drive was not being used by the system to try to boot, I would expect a different outcome -- either the system would move to the next device in the boot order (the internal drive) or you would get an error indicating that the drive was not bootable. I wouldn't expect it to complain that the boot drive was inaccessible.

Take the above with a grain of salt... In my opinion, a cloned drive would be placed internal to the system, replacing the existing system drive, connected to the same SATA port as the drive it replaced. Any other configuration is going to be hit or miss, in my opinion, because the boot information copied from the other drive differs from the position of the cloned drive.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Jay & Steve - Thanks for your detailed explanations, but I have 'abandoned the ship' at this point. I have reformatted the clone drive and will use it for other purposes. Jay's first advice to me was try it and see if it worked. It didn't.

But I do have another question. I also have two 2TB internal HDD's that I use for various things.....backups, virtual machine, etc. If I made one of these internal drives as my clone for my 512GB SSD, do you think that would work? Jay seems to imply that might be a solution.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

In my opinion, yes, one of the internal drives would work fine as a clone. However, you may still face an issue in testing the clone after it's made. It's been a long time since I've cloned a drive and then used the clone to boot the PC, but in each case I was replacing the original drive. I didn't test the boot [EDIT: To clarify, I didn't test before swapping out the old drive and moving the new clone into that original position.], but I viewed the data on the clone after it was made.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

It also must be considered that I don't believe that you can clone to a partition on a drive. If the internal is used also for other stuff it is all likely to go away as the clone will take the entire drive regardless of established partitions.

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Steve, after I made my clone I could and did view the data on the clone but it still wouldn't boot. I'm going to think on it some more, but I may try to make a clone on one of my internal HDDs after I move some data files around. Thanks for your input.

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http://barrypatch.net

Could be, Jay. When I created a clone using Macrium, that program set up a 475GB clone partition (same size as my SSD) on the 2TB external drive. The remaining space on that external drive was then unallocated. Thanks for all your input.

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http://barrypatch.net

Just a thought for later usage. If you have the SATA cables, power and data, connect them the next time you have the case open and run out the back of the box. Plug any drive to the cables and it is an internal even though it is outside of the box. You need pretty long cables. I use an 18 inch data cable and an extension on the power cable. I started doing this when I went from Windows 8.1 to 10. I just removed the 8.1 boot drive and plugged it in whenever I wanted to use which, I'll admit, was not often. This does have advantages though as you can do an image backup to a physically external drive at internal drive speeds and you would probably be able to boot your external clone. Of course the drive can't be in a USB enclosure.

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Thanks, Jay. I do understand what you are saying, as I actually did that years ago on an older computer. I still have new SATA cables, but old knees.....it is almost impossible for me to get down to work on my tower anymore these days.

It's about time for me to get a new tower computer, as my primary one is 5 years old and my dual boot (win 7 and 10) is about 11 years old. If and when I get a new computer, I will do as you suggested...either that or get a 2nd internal SSD drive to use as a clone. And that tower will be mounted on my desk rather than the floor, where I can readily get to it.

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