Very interesting article for me especially, because I wrote a Backup program two years ago and then decided to add a cloning feature to it. Really because I didn't much like what I had managed to find on the internet and I knew sooner or later I would suffer a major drive loss.
After several months I cracked all the processes necessary to do a clone from a programming point of view - it's not a well documented area.
The reason for telling you this is that there is no need to do anything special at all - that was one of my absolute aims and one of the reasons I didn't like the alternatives. No partitioning, no sorting out system from data files and folders.
One reason why this is important is that Windows, now more than ever, takes on an intrusive role that we have no choice about. It manages, decides, where it puts our data, for instance, it plonks lots of stuff in folders IT invented and won't allow you to get rid of.
"Documents and Settings" ring any bells? How about "MY documents" too?
I don't like any of that. So how do you really segregate data, settings, programs, system stuff effectively? With extreme difficulty and with lots of time and effort and frustration.
So my policy was to backup everything and then clone the system. The result is excellent. The first few runs takes hours as everything is slowly backed up, the cloning then takes a few more minutes but once that is done then all subsequent sessions take maybe 30 mins. All that is with a USB drive (and my laptop) and USB 1.0
My backup program is free if anyone is interested to try it (the add-on will be pay-for when I release it in a few weeks).
Very interesting article for me especially, because I wrote a Backup program two years ago and then decided to add a cloning feature to it. Really because I didn't much like what I had managed to find on the internet and I knew sooner or later I would suffer a major drive loss.
After several months I cracked all the processes necessary to do a clone from a programming point of view - it's not a well documented area.
The reason for telling you this is that there is no need to do anything special at all - that was one of my absolute aims and one of the reasons I didn't like the alternatives. No partitioning, no sorting out system from data files and folders.
One reason why this is important is that Windows, now more than ever, takes on an intrusive role that we have no choice about. It manages, decides, where it puts our data, for instance, it plonks lots of stuff in folders IT invented and won't allow you to get rid of.
"Documents and Settings" ring any bells? How about "MY documents" too?
I don't like any of that. So how do you really segregate data, settings, programs, system stuff effectively? With extreme difficulty and with lots of time and effort and frustration.
So my policy was to backup everything and then clone the system. The result is excellent. The first few runs takes hours as everything is slowly backed up, the cloning then takes a few more minutes but once that is done then all subsequent sessions take maybe 30 mins. All that is with a USB drive (and my laptop) and USB 1.0
My backup program is free if anyone is interested to try it (the add-on will be pay-for when I release it in a few weeks).
Paul E. Coughlin.
(SaneThinking.com)