brett <account@cygen.com> wrote:

>> 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.

Then you wouldnt be able to use that USB cradled hd in the laptop
when the original dies, you'd have to buy a new drive for the laptop
and restore those images from the USB cradled hd, and you said
that you dont want to do that.

And in that case the USB cradled hd need not be a laptop drive.

And you dont even need a USB cradled hd either, you can write
those images across the lan to drive space on a desktop PC etc.

There are some cloners that can incrementally clone, particularly xxclone,
but Acronis True Image cant incrementally clone, only incrementally image.

>> 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.

I'm using those terms in the same way Acronis does.

A clone is an exact copy of the original drive, it
has the same partitions, files etc as the original.

And image is a file which contains all Acronis needs to restore
to another drive so that drive is the same state as the original
was, and with incremental images, you get an extra file for
each incremental image you do. They are all used to restore
the new drive to the same state as the original was when the
last incremental image was done.

> 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.

Correct, altho that isnt necessarily strickly true with
older laptop drives that are normally only 4200 rpm
etc. A USB external drive can be a faster 7200 rpm 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.

Yes, but Acronis cant do incremental cloning, just incremental images
which involve restoring the images to a replacement drive if the original dies.

> What are the reasons to use either imaging or cloning?

Cloning allows much faster use of the clone if the original hard drive dies.
In your config you just have to unplug the USB cable and bridge from the
spare drive and plug the spare drive into the laptop in place of the now
dead original and boot off the replacement drive. It will then perform
just as well as the original drive did.

BUT Acronis True Image cannot do incremental cloning, it can only clone the entire drive to the
spare USB cradled hd. Thats not necessarily