Storage forum: Create partition on external hard drive

The clone software appears to want to write the entire image from drive to drive. Better clone or "imaging" software like ACRONIS, G4U and others allow you to save the image to a FILE then there is no issue. Since you didn't share the title you tried no one can comment if there is a misstep here.
Bob

"Cloning will destroy existing data on the target drive. "...

If I create a image of the entire hard drive on external hard drive would I be able (if I had to do a complete reinstall) boot this and restore the entire image and basically be where I was before drive failure. IE OS OE settings Software, internet settings etc, sorry if this question seems basic but try as I might I can not seem to get my head around this question
Will

for all replies, its hard to get your head around but I know can see differences between both processes, will image rather than clone.
Will

I bought an external harddrive from the local store myself, and want to put the entire contents of my computer on to it to store in case of my computer crashing. The directions were written in broken Chinese/English, and didn't make much sense.

Can someone tell me step by step how to do this? I've got Windows XP Pro and 33.1 gb to copy. It's a Dell desktop, too.

Like someone mentioned, is it possible to copy everything so that if it crashed I could use it to boot up and restore everything if I had to reinstall Windows and lost it all? I never did see anything about "partitioning" using the directions they gave, but I did see the command to Format the external F Drive and did that. After that, I was lost...

Thanks for any help...

Jan

While using the second internal HD solves the problem with booting from another HD, it makes the clone copy vulnerable to the same atacks as the first HD (theft, fire, mechanical damage of the pc, overvoltage etc.) so it is generally safer to use external disk - and store it separately.

You naturally won't be able to boot a working windows system from your external cloned HD, unless you physically replace it for the original one in its place.

But the cloning software you used for creating the copy (I myself prefer HDClone, after trying Acronis and Norton first) will of course allow you to restore the original contents onto original/replaced HD. The cloning soft can be booted as stand-alone system to accomplish this.

It is also advisable to divide your internal HD into at least two partitions, for the system and data, because a cloning soft enables you to clone just a partition. So you can clone the complete HD at the beginning and later replace only that part of image (partition) which has significantly changed. Additionaly, since cloning is usually very tim-consuming action, it can save you a lot of waiting .

A good cloning software is hard to get free of charge, but price of individual cloning systems is so low and its role in data security so high that I didn't hesitate to spend those few bucks for it.

If you already have a 6-month old file backup on an unpartitioned external drive, can you then impose a partition structure on that external drive and direct your new source disk image to be copied to the newly created (empty) partition on the external drive?

If it's possible, what software packages can accomplish this? (I'll be using Macrium Reflect to produce the disk image under Vista SP1.)

I never used the words "clone" or "cloning" - I explicitly said "disk image" because I didn't want to muddy the waters here.

Well, it's very clear that "Image" is better than "Clonig".
But, please if you explain this again I'll be gratefull.
Once I do an HDD Image to my external drive (MY BOOK 1T) , how or what do I have to do to "Boot" my computer from the external drive.
Is it posible??
Or do I have to redo an "Image" from my "External drive" to the HDD ??
I have Acronis True Image, do I have to Boot from the "Acronis Boot Disk", to get my computer to Boot from my External Drive??
I hope you can understand me......
HP Pressario Elite-Windows Vista 64

Up to you but I used free (recommended) software- I'm a bit of a communist/socialist at heart.

1. Back-up with drive image XML- Giving you a file (that you can move if you want) of around 20 Gb- you can compress if you want.
2. Next create a Windows installation environment cd. This will let you boot into windows if your drive crashes. I used BartPE, search for it and you can include an add-on for drive image xml. This program uses your windows cd and the add-ons you want to make a version of windows that runs from the cd drive- so you can restore windows.
3. That's it there are no more steps. This took me 4 days to work out and do- from a pc that booted okay after I had backed up my c drive- last month (docs on separate drive) but then ghost swapped my drive letters around and I lost all my programs, basically started again. Used my disc and recovered everything.

If you do this you will be very confident that you can sort out issues.