The benefits to cloning software versus back up software is something measured in time. How technologically savvy you are tends to guide you toward one or the other. Currently, my workstation here at Small Dog in South Burlington has a failing hard drive. Since everything is backed up to our remote management server, I’m not worried about data loss, but my concern at this point is the amount of time my workstation will be down and how productive I can be once it’s up and running again.
As I type this article, my workstation’s hard drive is currently being cloned to another hard drive that will replace the failing one. Cloning allows for the entire drive contents, OS and all to be copied over to a new drive, allowing you to pick up where you left off as if nothing has changed. There is an amount of setup and reorganization with backups and restoring from them. Both are a good thing to do, but cloning is only really a benefit if you are going to be doing the hard drive installation yourself.
I always recommend some form of backup regimen, but if you are experienced and know how to replace hard drives, then cloning software might be better then say, Time Machine. Or, you could use both — have cloning software constantly keep one hard drive backed up while using time machine for a redundant backup. That way, if one drive fails, taking your clone with it because of software corruption, you still have all your files backed up with Time Machine.
Of course, there is a possibility that the clone might become corrupt while cloning from a failing drive. I’m watching my drive getting cloned and there are error messages about sections being difficult to transfer. I will probably have to install a fresh copy of the OS over the top of what I have, effectively replacing the OS and leaving all my work data there. Then, I will have to reconfigure a lot of settings to be able to interface with work systems. If this happens, I may be down longer than I originally anticipated, and may need to restore the system the long way.
The manipulation of data is a crap shoot at times, especially whenever the medium that its placed on is in the process of failing. There isn’t really any guarantee that everything or even anything will be recovered, but if you catch your drive failure at an early stage, the better your chances are of being able to recover everything. (For previous articles on data recovery, check out the Tech Tails Archives.)
I’m currently using Mac-based software Carbon Copy Cloner. There are numerous Windows-based programs that do similar services, and Acronis is one that I can recall off the top of my head. Once the cloning process was complete, I installed the new drive into my workstation and booted it up.
Other than a few programs which I will have to reinstall, it appears to be working as if nothing happened, which allows me to get back to work in a timely manner. I can’t stress enough — back up your data because if you lose it, it may be gone forever.*
*Or super expensive to recover using DriveSavers or other data recovery service!