Cloning your storage drive???

[Fosh612]

Can someone explain to me what this is, I have no idea what this is. I am also sorry if this is in the wrong topic...

[ARikozuM]

You're copying all of the bits on the platters as exactly as they can. Cloning will set your new disk to show as a near-identical copy of the original whereas copying files would place bits wherever the new drive would like. 

[Fosh612]

2 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

You're copying all of the bits on the platters as exactly as they can. Cloning will set your new disk to show as a near-identical copy of the original whereas copying files would place bits wherever the new drive would like. 

Would that bring the Operating system along with it?

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Fosh612 said:

Would that bring the Operating system along with it?

Yes, it would. Cloning will leave everything as it was. An OS would continue to work correctly when cloned, but a copied OS would no longer work. 

[Fosh612]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Yes, it would. Cloning will leave everything as it was. An OS would continue to work correctly when cloned, but a copied OS would no longer work. 

What is the difference between cloning your OS, and copying?

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Fosh612 said:

What is the difference between cloning your OS, and copying?

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-disk-cloning-disk-imaging-68100.html

 

Quote

Disk cloning is the process of copying the entire contents of one hard drive to another including all the information that enables you to boot to the operating system from the drive.

Quote

 When you copy and paste files from one drive to another you're copying only the the actual files and not the additional data the hard drive uses to locate and access those files.

 

[Fosh612]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-disk-cloning-disk-imaging-68100.html

 

 

T%hanks a lot. Is it super difficult and or risky to clone onto a drive?

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, Fosh612 said:

What is the difference between cloning your OS, and copying?

Cloning uses a piece of software to duplicate everything.

You can't copy an OS over using file explorer copy paste.

You should not clone an OS, do a clean install.

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

If you only want to copy your documents and files you can just copy paste them, no need to clone.

[ARikozuM]

5 minutes ago, Fosh612 said:

T%hanks a lot. Is it super difficult and or risky to clone onto a drive?

Not really. I use Macrium Reflect to run daily, weekly, and monthly images of my OS. Just use your common sense and keep a backup handy. 

[Fosh612]

4 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Not really. I use Macrium Reflect to run daily, weekly, and monthly images of my OS. Just use your common sense and keep a backup handy. 

If I were to clone (if I do it) from a relative's PC, I don't have any other way of getting Windows 10 except buying it of course. So I have to clone their SSD onto my storage unit, after backing up their system?

[Fosh612]

2 minutes ago, Skylly said:

Before you clone storage drive, you should make sure that the disk space of target disk can't be smaller than the used disk space of the source disk. there is a third tool of MiniTool partition wizard have two copy modes, the one that copy source disk to target disk, the other one that just copies OS to target disk. The free version of minitool is adequate for the above.

Would you recommend cloning the OS? I really don't want to spend 120 dollars on the OS.