In message , Linea Recta
writes:
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BTW could you explain (briefly) the difference between cloning and
restoring a drive?
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Cloning: turning disc B into an exact copy of disc A. Involves two
drives, probably plus the drive (CD/DVD drive, USB stick, whatever) you
booted the cloning software from.

At its simplest, cloning software copies sector by sector from one drive
to another, regardless of whether they contain anything useful; though
most cloning software knows enough about how modern operating systems
(such as Windows) work, and only copies the sectors that contain
required data, unless you tell them otherwise.


Restoring: restoring a copy of a disc, from a backup you made earlier.
The backup could be a clone as above, but is more likely an _image_,
which is a _file_, containing details of the boot sector and one or more
partitions; an image file is not itself bootable. Restoring requires
(obviously) the drive you're restoring to, the drive the image is on
(which _could_ be e. g. a USB stick if big enough), and the drive you're
booting the restore software from.

Imaging software makes image files from the partitions (and even discs)
you tell it to; they're not unlike a giant ZIP file. Obviously, it knows
how to restore (unzip, if you like) these files later. Like cloning
software, modern imaging software knows enough about modern OSs to give
the option (usually the default) to only image the parts that had
relevant data on. They usually also offer compression, which makes the
image file even smaller, at the expense of some extra time while imaging
and restoring.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

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