Disk Imaging Software Offers More Flexible Ways to Prevent Data Loss

What Is Disk Imaging Software

Disk imaging software is a kind of backup software that is professional in copying the contents of a data storage device and then put them to another similar device (local drive, external hard drive, CD/DVD, network) with compressed file format. These original contents can be system, programs, setup and personal files. Disk imaging software is most commonly used in case of system crash or even disk crash where data recovery is the urgency.

There are two general types of disk imaging programs, Online and Offline. Online means that they can run with the operating system; while offline means they should be operated in alternative environments such as MSDOS, WinPE or Linux when Windows is not running. Today most imaging software are online programs.

A good disk imaging software should be the one that not only makes the process easy, but lets you choose which file/folder/partition/disk you want to clone or mount, schedule a backup, and whether to make an encryption. Besides, some welcomed imaging software even allows to customize command line scripts, letting you have great control over your data.

Why You Need an Imaging Software

Today disk imaging software is widely used by people from different occupations. The reasons are as follows:

Natural disasters, power outage and improper operations happen without a warning, which may lead to system failure or hard drive empty. By making a clone of your computer’s hard drive, you won't be troubled by reformatting and reinstalling the operating system, since imaging software offers you the ability to restore an image to your hard drive within a short time. Thus, you won't be troubled by reinstalling your operating system along with all your programs and settings.

Besides, with professional disk imaging software, you’ll have the flexibility to move your information to other computers, keep it protected via encryption and perform a variety of advanced capabilities: booting from a pre-OS recovery environment; creating a disk image and restoring image to other locations such as a solid state drive; etc.

Moreover, some disk imaging software offers Universal Restore feature, which is a time-saving choice when you are faced with dozens of computers - even with dissimilar hardware - to be installed in a limited time.

In a word, no matter you’re a computer beginner or experienced IT professional, disk imaging software is very useful.

Disk Imaging VS. Disk Cloning VS. Copy & Paste

Now you know imaging software is a great choice when you need to carry out data protection. However, there are many users who are not clear about the differences among copy & paste, clone, and image. After all, all of them can be regarded as backup methods. Thus they may choose an impropriate way to do system and application backup. Next we will talk about their differences and in what situation should they be applied respectively.

Copy & Paste

Copy & paste is most commonly used to backup small amount of personal files, such as pictures, excels, movies. When you copy and paste files from one location to another, you only copy the files but abandon their additional data like the master boot record and the file allocation table, leading to some applications unable to run. Most important of all, a copy & paste system backup won't boot.

Disk Cloning

Disk cloning is most suitable for transferring the whole disk data to do hard drive upgrading. The reason? Disk copy will copy the entire contents of one hard drive to another including all the information that enables you to boot the operating system from the destination drive. Besides, data on the destination drive will be identical to the source drive when it was created.

It is worth mentioning that when you clone a hard drive, the target drive will be wiped usually and the drive can only be shared by only one cloning. If you need more copies, you should prepare more hard drives.

Disk Imaging

Disk imaging is a great prevention solution on backup issue. The process of making an image backup is very similar with that of disk cloning. However, one more step is carried out - file compression. Thus, a disk image needs to be opened and installed on the drive by using an imaging program before they can be used, which means you can't restore a hard drive by simply placing original data with disk image files. Moreover, unlike disk cloning, a single hard drive can be shared with multiple disk images.

In a nutshell, copy & paste, disk imaging and disk cloning are three ways to do backup. Nevertheless, the latter two are more reliable ways, and it’s hard to tell which one is better. But here is one point you can refer to: when backing up drive A to B, if B is used to replace drive A, then disk cloning is more straight forward, you just clone A and use B; if you only backup A to B in case of an emergency, consider disk imaging software, for it is space-saving and more personalized.

"Disk Imaging and Disk Cloning are much safer ways than copy & paste in data backup, so disk cloning software and disk imaging software are necessary for data protecting."
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Free Back Software We Can Get

Since data backup is so important and useful, in this part we would like to introduce two pieces of free backup software we can get.

So what’s the deal?

Disk Imaging Freeware - Windows Backup and Restore

The first one should be Windows built-in Backup and Restore. "Backup and Restore is a component of Microsoft Windows introduced in Windows Vista and included in later versions that allow users to create backups and restore from backups created earlier. It is a replacement of NT Backup, which was included in previous Windows versions. It became a deprecated feature in Windows 8 before being completely removed in Windows 8.1 in favor of File History. However, in Windows 10, it was re-incorporated into the operating system." ^{From Wikipedia}

Here is how you can make use of it, take Windows 10 for example:

Step 1: Right click on icon and select Control Panel. In the pop-up window, choose Back up and Restore (Windows 7).



Step 2: If this is the first time you use this tool ,you should click Set up back-up to begin.



Step 3: Windows will ask you to choose a location to save your backup. The location can be another partition on the same drive, an external hard drive (Recommended), DVD drive, or even a network. Then click Next to go on setting.



Step 4: Now choose what content you would like to back up. If you select Let Windows choose, then files saved in Libraries, on the desktop, in default Windows folders will be backed up and an image of the operating system will be created. You can also determine what to back up by ticking Let me choose. Click Next to continue.



Step 5: Now you can review your backup settings, including the backup content, backup location, as well as backup schedule.



Please note that you can change the backup schedule accroding to your preference.

Attention: Windows Backup and Restore use the most space-saving incremental backup method.

In most popular backup software, there are three options to customize a backup:

• Full backup: will back up all contents each time, which is most time-consuming and space-consuming.
• Differential backup: will back up the changed data since last full backup. Won't remove Archive Attribute after each backup.
• Incremental backup: only back up the changed files since last backup, which is most space-saving. Will remove Archive Attribute after each backup. (no follow)

Prior to backup, you may carry out anti-virus to ensure the system is green. After that, quit all programs and close all the windows to reduce backup errors and improve the backup efficiency.

Then How Can You Carry out the Restore?

Step 1: At the same location with backup, choose Restore my files.



Step 2: Browse files or folders to select a backup. In our example, we select Browse for folders.



See in the location where we just created a backup, there is folder of which the attribute is Backup. Then we click Add folder to show it the list box. But in your own case, if you have made more than one backup folder, you should choose the most appropriate one to continue. You can also choose a single file backup to restore.



Step 3: In the display box, you just tick the files/folders you have selected and click Next.



Step 4: Here you should choose where do you want to restore files: in the original location or in another location. In our case, we choose the former one. Then click Restore button.



Step 5: After a while, the restoration will be finished.

Disk Cloning Software - MiniTool Partition Wizard

Another recommendation is called MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. This is a disk cloning program that can be used to clone disk, system, and partition. The reason why we recommend it is that it is not only ease of use, but also ensure that when you have finished system cloning or system hard drive cloning, the destination disk is bootable. Thus, Partition Wizard is another reliable way to do backup.

How can Partition Wizard clone a system?

Download Now (Works for Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP)

Step 1: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition and click Launch Application. In the software interface click "Migrate OS to SSD/HD Wizard".



Step 2: A new window will come out. In this window you should choose a destination disk to hold the operating system of the source disk. You should know all data on the target drive will be erased after system cloning. So if something important is still left on the drive, make a backup at first. Then click Next to go on.



Step 3: Here you can change the copy option: to fit partitions to entire disk, to copy partitions without resize or to edit partitions on the target disk. If your target disk is an SSD or advanced format disk, you can also tick the Force to align to 1MB option to improve disk performance. Click Next to continue.



Step 4: Here Partition Wizard tells how to boot from the destination drive. Since you are cloning the operating system, you should pay attention to the notice. Then click Finish to go back to the main interface and press Apply to make the changes you have made effective.



Are you wondering how to backup Server? This post tells all.

This is the end of how to clone system, next we will show you how you can use Partition Wizard to clone a whole drive.

Step 1: Launch this hard drive cloning software. In the main interface you should choose the source disk and select Copy Disk Wizard under Wizard OR select Copy from the right-click menu. If you select Copy, you will be directly led to the window to choose destination drive; if you choose Copy Disk Wizard, then you will meet the welcome page and the source disk selection page before you can choose a target drive.

Step 2: Here choose a hard drive that can hold all data on the source drive and click Next to continue. Same with system cloning, the target drive will be cleaned.



Step 3: Now choose a copy option and go on.



Step 4: You will see the Boot from Destination Disk notice again. At this time, click Finish to go back to the main interface and press Apply to execute disk cloning.

Note:

• Migrate OS to SSD/HD and Copy Disk feature only works for basic disks.
• In the coming months of this year, MiniTool will release professional disk imaging software to help users to do backup better. Please follow us in social accounts to get the first hand message.