copying & replacing hd

[George]

Norton Ghost will overwrite.

Kinda surprised that Acronis wants an empty drive just to create a image file, even for cloning, for that matter.

Cloning does replace anything on the target drive, so one has to be careful, but imaging replaces nothing, simply creates a compressed image of the source drive.

[bryant]

Originally Posted by George

Norton Ghost will overwrite.

Kinda surprised that Acronis wants an empty drive just to create a image file, even for cloning, for that matter.

Cloning does replace anything on the target drive, so one has to be careful, but imaging replaces nothing, simply creates a compressed image of the source drive.

I use Acronis and the destination drive (mine is 250 Gb) has to be completely empty and/or erased prior to cloning. I only clone a 40 Gb HD on this 250 Gb, sheesh.

george, I'm still confused about image and clone differences. Why one and not the other? Why have a choice of both, what difference does it make?

[hwheeler43]

When you Clone a drive you are making a boot drive copy of your existing drive. It cannot have other files on it. When you create an image you are taking a snapsot of your entire hard drive to an image file that can be restored to a new hard drive by booting your computer from a cd that you create and then restoring the image to the new hard drive. This image can be used much like a restore cd except you have all your settings and software on it. I hope this explanation is not too confusing. Also, Acronis does not need an empty drive to do an image. Just for cloning a drive.

[billyo]

Originally Posted by hwheeler43

When you Clone a drive you are making a boot drive copy of your existing drive. It cannot have other files on it. When you create an image you are taking a snapsot of your entire hard drive to an image file that can be restored to a new hard drive by booting your computer from a cd that you create and then restoring the image to the new hard drive. This image can be used much like a restore cd except you have all your settings and software on it. I hope this explanation is not too confusing. Also, Acronis does not need an empty drive to do an image. Just for cloning a drive.

acronis has both clone and image, so what would be the best and easy way of doing it..