Recently, I bought a one terabyte external hard drive and Macrium Reflect backup software as you recommended. But now Iâm very much confused about two features of it⊠and that is âCreate Backup Image Wizardâ and âBackup Files and Folder Wizardâ. What is the difference between the two? What are the respective purposes? Iâve Googled about this and even searched on your site, but I couldnât figure it out, so I finally decided to write you my first
question.
In this excerpt from Answercast #48, I look at the difference between a full image backup of a hard drive and selectively backing up files and folders.
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Images vs. Files
They are two different things. Itâs actually very confusing and very important to understand the difference.
A backup âimageâ
When you create a âbackup image,â you are creating an image of the hard drive, of all of the data thatâs stored on the hard drive. So what that means is:
- Youâre backing up all of Windows;
- All of the programs that you have installed in Windows;
- All of the settings;
- All of your data;
- All of everything that happens to be on the drive that youâre backing up.
- You create an âimageâ of a drive.
So, you might backup by creating an image of your C drive.
Backup files and folders
Usinf the files and folder wizard (âbackup files and foldersâ) means that you are choosing not to backup everything, but in fact, you will determine which folders are going to get backed up:
- So you might elect to then backup only your documents.
Recovering from a failure
A hard disk drive failure (which is in my opinion the biggest reason for backing up) is going to take away everything on the hard drive. That means you would want an âimage backupâ to restore to a replacement hard drive.
Backing up files only
Now, on the other hand, there are definitely scenarios where you donât need to do that.
- You may have other ways of dealing with hardware failure;
- Or you may be backing up for other reasons.
In which case backing up only your documents, or only the files you choose to backup, may be an appropriate way.  It certainly uses less disk space. Clearly, if youâre only backing up your documents, thatâs going to be significantly smaller than backing up your entire computer. Your entire hard disk includes not only your documents, but all of Windows and all of your applications;
So it really depends on specifically what your intent is behind creating this backup.
Image backup is safest
In most cases, what you want is an image backup. You want to be able to restore everything and anything.
And thatâs the other virtue of an image backup. When you are creating a file and folder backup, you need to be right. In other words:
- You need to know everything that it is that you want to back up and list it.
- You have to tell Macrium, âBackup everything in this folderâ, âBackup everything in that folderâŠâ
- If you miss a folder, if you forget a folder, itâs not going to get backed up.
If you create an image backup, then everything on that hard drive gets backed up; And I do mean everything! Everything except the space that isnât used.
Recovering with your backup
What that means is that you can use that in either of two ways â the scenario that I mentioned earlier:
- Your hard drive fails;
- You replace the hard drive;
- And then you restore that image onto your replacement hard drive;
- And you pick up where you left off.
Or if for some reason, you suddenly realize, âOh, crap! I deleted a file yesterday that I didnât mean to delete,â you can still use that image backup to:
- Go and extract just that single file;
- And restore just that single file,
No matter what file it was â because the image backup included everything â including that file.
So, like I said, in general, in most cases, I honestly believe that most people want âimage backupsâ for their routine backups, for their ongoing maintenance, for their disaster preparedness.
âFiles folders backupâ is something that you would consider generally for special needs⊠and Iâll put it this way: I donât use it. I only do image backups of my machine. Thatâs all I need; thatâs what my backups are for.
Next from Answercast 48 â Why is typing in Yahoo! mail so slow?
Hi Leo, windows 7 pro 64 bit : I did an image backup of C: I burned it to DVDâsâIt used 8 each. That took 2 hours and 26 Minutes. My
system has a 1T internal HDD. It copied the D:
and the special partition too. Love the Mecrim Reflex software.
I have a large external hard drive. How can I do an image backup of my C: drive to it?
@Nancy
By using a backup program like Macrium Reflect
I use three external drives for backup purposes and alternate between them, so that no backup is older than two weeks. (It beats doing incremental backups.) I use Acronis and it works well.
Got to love Macriun Reflect. I image 68 G in less then 20 minutes. Havenât had to restore yet, I trust it works. I guess you canât simulate a restore.
I will never understand why people love image backups. You donât know if the backup worked, and you canât boot to an imaged backup. And you donât have to just backup âfilesâ. With the right software, you can backup [copy] the entire C drive to an external. That backup is fully bootable so you can test it. My two ext drives have full copies, every file including Windows. I can enter Setup and change the boot sequence for booting to the ext drive. I keep one onsite and one offsite. The first backup might take and hour, but after that, only a few minutes. Why use an âimageâ of a drive instead of a real, 100% file by file copy?
Whatâs the difference between and imaging the disk and cloning the disk in Macrium?
@Lynn
Imaging and cloning are two words that offer the same protection in the context of backup. An image only backs up the files on your drive, while a clone copies everything, including unused space from the drive
The article describes the importance of an image backup but when I downloaded Macrium Reflect I was faced with two options which confused me.
The Macrium help states:
Clone Disk: Create a clone of the selected disk. If this is a system disk, it can be redeployed to a different system without any further configuration required. This is useful if you are upgrading your disk
Image this disk: Runs the âImage Local Drivesâ wizard, selecting the current disk and associated partitions by default.
Those descriptions mean nothing to me. According to the article we only need an image backup to recover from a faulty hard disk. Can someone end this confusion?
I did not find Macrium Reflect easy to understand. The âOverviewâ in the help section contains sections on âDisk Typesâ and âPartition Alignmentâ, which were double Dutch to me.
I have spent hours downloading and creating image files and a recovery disk but I am still unable to restore one file that I deleted for practice.
02-Oct-2012
Having now read http://ask-leo.com/whats_the_difference_between_disk_imaging_and_copying.html I conclude that Macrium uses the term âcloning a diskâ for what Leo describes as a true disk image and they use âDisk Imageâ for what Leo describes as a filesystem image. Leo states that you only need the filesystem image so I am still wondering why the cloning option is included.
Thanks for the question and thanks for the answer. For some reason, I canât wrap my head around a lot of the âbackupâ information I read. I searched online, but I guess what I needed was a âfor dummiesâ explanation :) and wasnât finding it. Although I understood the difference between the two kinds of backup, and the idea of an image backup, I couldnât find a more specific explanation of how to make one and how itâs used practicallyâAt first, I didnât even know I needed software :). So this article helps.
I normally just make copies of my files and folders since I donât have much to save and I wouldnât mind having to start from scratch, but I would like understand âbackupsâ better.
I bought a Seagate FreeAgent Go external drive, but I donât really know how to properly use it :). For now, I use it to copy personal files and folders every month. I did âdo a backupâ with the Seagate, but I donât understand how Iâd use it. The file says âMicrosoft Backup Fileâ and the backup report says âActive backup destination: FileâŠBackup (via shadow copy) of âC:ââŠBackup Type: Normalâ
âŠ.is this an image backup :)?
If I needed to use it, would I just click on this file and it would âtellâ me what to do and restore everything?
My HP Computer (Windows7 Home) came with an HP Recovery partician. I assume this would just reset my computer back to the factory default if something crashed. So, I use an external HD to drag all 3 users folders to this external HD which I assume is just the users Libraries (like the docs, pics, videos, and music). I can always reinstall my Norton and Malwarebytes if needed.
Should this method actually be ok for adding user Libraries back onto my Hard Drive if needed? This is the only method that I actually feel comfortable using or am I being naive?
I do not have other added programs.
Could you discuss using an image backup (Windows 10 or EaseUs ToDo) on a computer where the hard drive is protected by BitLocker? Would the image be encrypted and would there be problems trying to restore it to a replacement hard drive should the original one fail? I am just wondering in general what the issues would be and how BitLocker would affect things. Thanks.
How do you boot up from an image copy on a ssd. My original hard drive crashed so I made a copy from another computer. No backup
You donât. Images created by backup programs arenât designed to be booted from. You need to create a rescue disk using the backup software, boot from that, and then use the backup software to restore the backup image to the hard drive.