> Yes, a clone as opposed to an image does allow you to just plug
> the spare drive in and carry on regardless on a hard drive failure.
>
> But you do not have to clone to an identical internal hard drive,
> any decent cloner can clone to a different sized internal drive
> fine and all you need to do is ensure that the laptop can boot
> with either of the drives installed.
>
> You havent been clear how you plan to clone the original drive
> to a new one in the laptop.

Using Acronis, I'll incrementally image the primary hd onto the USB
cradled hd.

>That can be done with the better
> cloners with the target of the clone in a USB external case that
> is used for just the cloning. If the original drive fails, you can just
> unplug the original drive from the laptop and plug the clone into
> the laptop and boot from that there.
>
> BUT you dont get incremental cloning with most cloners.
> Most apps that do incremental only do that for imaging, not cloning.

Not clear on you mean with imaging and cloning. See below.

>
> And you dont actually need an external case for the cloning op,
> there are cables around that allow you to plug the spare drive
> into a connector block on a USB cable and clone to the spare
> drive using that. If the original drive does fail, you can just plug
> that spare into the laptop and use it at full speed in the laptop
> and retain the mechanical convenience of an internal laptop drive.


No way is an external USB drive going to be faster than the internal
hard drive. So, putting a spare internal hard drive into a USB cradle
as a mirror allows the fastest and easiest setup when the primary
drive crashes.
What are the reasons to use either imaging or cloning?

Thanks,
Brett