OT-another basic image b/u query

I've ordered TrueImage 10.0.

My intent is to create a b/u complete image of my hard drive on to an
external drive, but I'm confused about something here.

The laptop I'm using has only a "C" drive let's say with 30gig used. (Dell
Inspiron 2200)

My USB WD external drive has two partitions, D and E.

I have assorted individual folders/files on each partition that I want to
keep there. Each partition has say 50 gig free.

My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still retain
the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition for
adding other files?

Can I see that the "E" partition will be uneffected?

In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the image
(and hence lose what was already on there?).




Mel

> My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still retain
> the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition for
> adding other files?

Shouldn't be a problem - something else that might be worth doing is set
the backup size to 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well - it'll
just create as many 4.7Gb files as it needs

> In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
> reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the image
> (and hence lose what was already on there?).

Yes, it just creates files, it doesn't try to clone the existing drive
on top of another *unless* you ask it to !

....in which case, if it offers to let it resize for you, let it - I
managed to f*ck a 10Gb partition on an 80Gb drive by cloning a 4Gb
partition to it - it wrote the data in such a way that nothing has been
able to retrieve the missing 6Gb since... a standard backup does NOT do
this, so don't worry about it !

On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 23:22:20 -0500, "MZB" <>
wrote:

>I've ordered TrueImage 10.0.
>
>My intent is to create a b/u complete image of my hard drive on to an
>external drive, but I'm confused about something here.
>
>The laptop I'm using has only a "C" drive let's say with 30gig used. (Dell
>Inspiron 2200)
>
>My USB WD external drive has two partitions, D and E.
>
>I have assorted individual folders/files on each partition that I want to
>keep there. Each partition has say 50 gig free.
>
>My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still retain
>the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition for
>adding other files?
>
>Can I see that the "E" partition will be uneffected?
>
>In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
>reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the image
>(and hence lose what was already on there?).
>


Yes, it's just a file(s) that would reside on your external drive (and
I think you can preset the common size of each file which are restored
in sequence together). If the file(s) do not require the entire
capacity of your external drive, you can use it for other unrelated
files/programs. You can also start the TrueImage program from an
external source (restore disk) to restore your image files on your
hard drive in case of a hard drive crash.

Colin:

OK thanks, but perhaps the terminology is confusing me.

I thought cloning a drive and creating an image was the same thing. Is that
NOT the case? I'm trying to avoid EXACTLY what you described!

Mel



"Colin Wilson" <> wrote in message
news: t...
>> My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still
>> retain
>> the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition
>> for
>> adding other files?
>
> Shouldn't be a problem - something else that might be worth doing is set
> the backup size to 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well - it'll
> just create as many 4.7Gb files as it needs
>
>> In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
>> reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the
>> image
>> (and hence lose what was already on there?).
>
> Yes, it just creates files, it doesn't try to clone the existing drive
> on top of another *unless* you ask it to !
>
> ...in which case, if it offers to let it resize for you, let it - I
> managed to f*ck a 10Gb partition on an 80Gb drive by cloning a 4Gb
> partition to it - it wrote the data in such a way that nothing has been
> able to retrieve the missing 6Gb since... a standard backup does NOT do
> this, so don't worry about it !

Re: "something else that might be worth doing is set the backup size to
4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well"

Because of the confusion over binary vs. decimal definitions for
gigabytes, I have found that on my system I need to set the size to
4200MB. You don't get 4.7GB on a recordable DVD, you get 4,700,000,000
bytes (4.7GB binary GB would be 5,046,586,572 bytes). The issue is
further compounded by the fact that your image program may ask you to
specify the size of pieces into which the image is divided in Megabytes,
and you don't know if those are binary or decimal megabytes. It takes
some experimentation to find out what size you need to specify, but in
almost all cases it's going to be less than 4.7GB (or 4,700MB).


Colin Wilson wrote:
>> My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still retain
>> the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition for
>> adding other files?
>
> Shouldn't be a problem - something else that might be worth doing is set
> the backup size to 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well - it'll
> just create as many 4.7Gb files as it needs
>
>> In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
>> reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the image
>> (and hence lose what was already on there?).
>
> Yes, it just creates files, it doesn't try to clone the existing drive
> on top of another *unless* you ask it to !
>
> ...in which case, if it offers to let it resize for you, let it - I
> managed to f*ck a 10Gb partition on an 80Gb drive by cloning a 4Gb
> partition to it - it wrote the data in such a way that nothing has been
> able to retrieve the missing 6Gb since... a standard backup does NOT do
> this, so don't worry about it !

> Re: "something else that might be worth doing is set the backup size to
> 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well"

OK, OK, its in the settings - just set it to the option above a standard
CD...

> OK thanks, but perhaps the terminology is confusing me.
> I thought cloning a drive and creating an image was the same thing. Is that
> NOT the case? I'm trying to avoid EXACTLY what you described!

TrueImage can create a backup by reading the source drive and creating
an image (files, which can be burned to CD/DVD, held on a networked PC
etc) - which in turn can be used to restore the drive (or a new one) to
its original state, or it can "clone" a drive by copying everything from
one drive to a new drive.

If you know what I mean :-}

Backup -> create the files (image) of the machine as it is "now"

Restore -> this image can be used to restore either the original drive
*or* a new drive - effectively cloning the original drive
to a new one from the image if the drive fails / you upgrade
(if you "restore" to a different size of drive, allow it to
resize the data as it suggests, or you may find the new drive
thinks its the same size as the old one, and can't be altered
by *anything*)

Clone -> copy the entire contents from an existing drive to a new one
with both drives installed in the machine, resizing as
necessary as it goes

Oddly, the preset sizes in Drive Image do not correspond well to
real-world media. You have to make a manual entry if you want sizes
that make any sense (which you also have to determine with a bit of
experimentation). Fortunately, you are allowed to enter any arbitrary
number and it works.



Colin Wilson wrote:
>> Re: "something else that might be worth doing is set the backup size to
>> 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well"
>
> OK, OK, its in the settings - just set it to the option above a standard
> CD...

No, cloning a drive [let's call it a "direct clone"] and creating an
image are not the same thing.

When you clone a drive [directly], both drives are connected to the
computer at the same time and the software makes the destination drive a
"clone" of the source drive in real time. No files are created (or, if
there are some temporary work files created, they are incidental and
transparent to the process).

When you create an image, on the other hand, the source is a drive
(actually a drive partition) and the destination is a file that will be
written to some media other than the partition being imaged (it can be
on another partition of the same drive, on a different physical drive
(internal or external), on a network store, or on optical media). But
the destination is a file (possibly broken into multiple files, if you
tell the program to break up the destination file up into pieces
(normally for later writing to some kind of removable media)). The
destination file is just a normal disk file, although it's typically
large (hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes). You can copy it, delete it,
rename it, move it, etc.

The Image program can be used to write the image file back to a drive
(either the same drive that was originally made from or a different
drive), and if you do that the result would then be the same as if you
had cloned the drive. Separately, for restoring individual files or
folders, the Image file can also be accessed directly, without first
restoring it to any drive. For such access, in some cases the image
file is literally "mounted" and give a drive letter, after which it
behaves like a read-only drive; in other cases, only a program that
comes with the Image program can access it to copy folders and/or files
"out of it", but either way you can view and get to it's contents
without actually restoring the entire image back to a hard drive partition.


MZB wrote:
> Colin:
>
> OK thanks, but perhaps the terminology is confusing me.
>
> I thought cloning a drive and creating an image was the same thing. Is that
> NOT the case? I'm trying to avoid EXACTLY what you described!
>
> Mel
>
>
>
> "Colin Wilson" <> wrote in message
> news: t...
>>> My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still
>>> retain
>>> the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition
>>> for
>>> adding other files?
>> Shouldn't be a problem - something else that might be worth doing is set
>> the backup size to 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well - it'll
>> just create as many 4.7Gb files as it needs
>>
>>> In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
>>> reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the
>>> image
>>> (and hence lose what was already on there?).
>> Yes, it just creates files, it doesn't try to clone the existing drive
>> on top of another *unless* you ask it to !
>>
>> ...in which case, if it offers to let it resize for you, let it - I
>> managed to f*ck a 10Gb partition on an 80Gb drive by cloning a 4Gb
>> partition to it - it wrote the data in such a way that nothing has been
>> able to retrieve the missing 6Gb since... a standard backup does NOT do
>> this, so don't worry about it !
>
>

Thanks. I think I'm understanding it now.
Basically, a cloned drive becomes an exact duplicate of the source drive.

In fact, if my source drive is say 30gig and I have a 60 gig external hd, if
I clone to that hd I believe it turns into a 30gig hard drive. I'm not sure
how one would regain that additional 30 gig. I assume formatting might do
it, but then of course you've destroyed the cloned information.

Does that sound correct??

Mel




"Barry Watzman" <> wrote in message
news:4589b158$0$17193$...
> No, cloning a drive [let's call it a "direct clone"] and creating an image
> are not the same thing.
>
> When you clone a drive [directly], both drives are connected to the
> computer at the same time and the software makes the destination drive a
> "clone" of the source drive in real time. No files are created (or, if
> there are some temporary work files created, they are incidental and
> transparent to the process).
>
> When you create an image, on the other hand, the source is a drive
> (actually a drive partition) and the destination is a file that will be
> written to some media other than the partition being imaged (it can be on
> another partition of the same drive, on a different physical drive
> (internal or external), on a network store, or on optical media). But the
> destination is a file (possibly broken into multiple files, if you tell
> the program to break up the destination file up into pieces (normally for
> later writing to some kind of removable media)). The destination file is
> just a normal disk file, although it's typically large (hundreds of
> megabytes to gigabytes). You can copy it, delete it, rename it, move it,
> etc.
>
> The Image program can be used to write the image file back to a drive
> (either the same drive that was originally made from or a different
> drive), and if you do that the result would then be the same as if you had
> cloned the drive. Separately, for restoring individual files or folders,
> the Image file can also be accessed directly, without first restoring it
> to any drive. For such access, in some cases the image file is literally
> "mounted" and give a drive letter, after which it behaves like a read-only
> drive; in other cases, only a program that comes with the Image program
> can access it to copy folders and/or files "out of it", but either way you
> can view and get to it's contents without actually restoring the entire
> image back to a hard drive partition.
>
>
> MZB wrote:
>> Colin:
>>
>> OK thanks, but perhaps the terminology is confusing me.
>>
>> I thought cloning a drive and creating an image was the same thing. Is
>> that NOT the case? I'm trying to avoid EXACTLY what you described!
>>
>> Mel
>>
>>
>>
>> "Colin Wilson" <> wrote in message
>> news: t...
>>>> My question: Can I create my image saved to the D partition and still
>>>> retain
>>>> the files/folders I had there and also still have use of that partition
>>>> for
>>>> adding other files?
>>> Shouldn't be a problem - something else that might be worth doing is set
>>> the backup size to 4.7Gb and you can burn them to DVD as well - it'll
>>> just create as many 4.7Gb files as it needs
>>>
>>>> In other words, when I create a B/U image, is it just a file that would
>>>> reside on my external drive or does it turn that drive itself into the
>>>> image
>>>> (and hence lose what was already on there?).
>>> Yes, it just creates files, it doesn't try to clone the existing drive
>>> on top of another *unless* you ask it to !
>>>
>>> ...in which case, if it offers to let it resize for you, let it - I
>>> managed to f*ck a 10Gb partition on an 80Gb drive by cloning a 4Gb
>>> partition to it - it wrote the data in such a way that nothing has been
>>> able to retrieve the missing 6Gb since... a standard backup does NOT do
>>> this, so don't worry about it !
>>