backing up a hard drive to another hard drive

[teran]

<p>Ok, this may be a dumb question, but I was curious if you drag and drop one hard drive to another back up hard drive will it affectively clone that hard drive? So, if the first one were to crash, would it be backed up on the second still through this method stated? please be kind, thanks for your time</p>

[frank_skomial]

<p>Yes, or maybe?, if the drive is a data drive, e.g. like old diskette.<br>

If it is a system drive, then most likely will not copy boot sector and system files that perhaps cannot be read by Windows Explorer. Also using command line copy command may not work.<br>

However, there is some software that duplicates drive image into another drive or volume.<br>

For Windows versions you may need to create a set of recovery disks, frequent save points, and data backup to another disc, and this would allow recovery, with some pain and work/time needed for possibly needed application re-installations.</p>

[john_deerfield]

<p>Boot question aside, I would look for software to create a back up of your drive/data. I am on a Mac and use CCC (carbon copy cloner). By using software to create a back up, you can now just run the software to perform incremental back ups. That is the only data being copied is new a changed data.</p>

[jfz]

<p>Drag/drop does not transfer any system files to another harddisk. Harddisk manufacturers, such as western digital, provide free software for disk cloning/backup (assuming you use windows-based OS). You can create an exact copy of your first harddisk, which is bootable. </p>

[howard_m]

<p>as everyone has noted, you need more specialized software if your goal is to 'clone' a disk, esp. if that disk is your boot disk. There are magic bits that drag-n-drop dont get.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>You really want a utility to do this (on the Mac, CCC has been mentioned and is free, for a few bucks SuperDuper is awesome). Not only will you get a sector for sector copy, but if you later need to update newer files, only the new stuff gets copied which speeds up the operation hugely. </p>

[teran]

<p>Thank you for all your responses, I've been fairly ignorant about Mac computer technology in the past, and have probably improperly backed up a lot of my work. I just started constructing a new system of backing up my files after reading a lot of diggloyd's advice, but because I'm having trouble following a lot the jargon and technologic terms its been a slow process for me, but im learning. I have a lot of fixing and clean up to do because I'm so deep in files and numerous external hard drives being incorrectly backed up or not backed up at all. I've already used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my bootable drive, but I was using the Time Machine to backup a lot of my data and photography files on another internal hard drive. Would anyone advise doing it differently, with CCC instead or am I going about it the best way? Thanks again</p>

[mendel_leisk]

<p>If you go back 10~15 years, the perception of copying files was pretty straightforward. Nothing has really changed now, just the perceptions.</p>

<p>Operating system designers seem to do their level best to discourage simple file copies and/or transfers. To be fair, there is some reasoning behind this: if you move crucial system files you can really mess things up.</p>

<p>But for simple "data" files, ie: files you've created, there's no problem. There's various methods that will accomplish a copy or move, depending on your operating system. I would tend to stick with the most keyboard centric method, less fallible than drag-and-drop.</p>

[walter_degroot]

<p>If you just need to copy data files. and notCLONE your drive.<br>

get a copy of ZTREE, You can ALT-COPY. to put the DATA files in the same location as on the older drive<br>

Norton Ghose worked well before some newer OS. A newer version may work better. But is a commercial program and costs money.<br>

we also used ez-gig and in some instances worked OK<br>

BUT could not be removed s it wanted to be installed<br>

on the source drive. I think there are bot commercial and non commercial versions of ez-gig.</p>

<p>the third we use is called "clonezilla" it is free.<br>

comes in 32 and 64 bit versions. I think the 32 will copy a 64 bit<br>

os. Clonezilla runs from a cd. and creates a BOOTABLE<br>

clone of your hard drive - a true mirror.<br>

IF you clone your hard drive TEST IT after cloning.<br>

the two earlier programs may bot allow the hard driev to boot the system.<br>

.</p>

[walter_degroot]

<p>BTW those of you in IT dept<br>

My son told an IT professional about Clonezilla<br>

he updated 40 systemsat once over the company web<br>

from his desk. it has that ability.</p>

[john_deerfield]

<p>It seems as though the OP is on a Mac so ZTREE won't be of any use (unless using a Windows partition). In terms of terminology, you can have software <em>clone</em> your drive. This is an <em>exact</em> copy of your drive. This is useful for creating another <em>bootable</em> hard drive. If you primary boot drive fails, you haven't lost any time because you can simply boot from the cloned drive. In terms of backing up and/or archiving data, you don't need an <em>exact</em> copy of the drive, you just want a copy of the data. As you have discovered, simply copying data to hard drives can be burdensome and confusing. The catch is, you really have to develop a workflow the works for you. One that you understand and can implement daily/weekly/monthly etc. I haven't used Time Machine so I can't really comment on it. For us, we use Apple's Aperture to manage our image libraries including making back up hard drives. I keep most of my other data on a 1TB hard drive and use CCC to back that up periodically, and finally we have a dedicated iTunes hard drive and again we use CCC to back that up periodically. The advantage to CCC (or other software of this nature) is that when I back up say the iTunes drive, it is only copying the <em>new</em> information. It isn't copying <em>all </em>the information again.</p>

[sknowles]

<p>I use Intego Backup Manager Pro to a LaCie 2TB HD to backup up the four internal HD (Mac Pro) and create a bootable (clone) backup on an older separate HD (from Mac PPC). It all runs overnight, a daily updated version of the main HD and twice weekly on the other three HD's. It took a few days to sort it all out but now it runs in the background at intervals from 11 pm to 4 am. The Time Machine backup provides any immediate backups of the four internal HD's (excludes all external HD's).</p>