As I think about your situation, what you do seems perfectly logical... assuming imaging to a HD is properly reliable. Cloning is making an identical copy of your working drive. (If you had a 2nd HD in your machine you would have the option to clone to it.) The advantages of cloning: (1) much faster than imaging, (2) waaayy more reliable than imaging to optic media, (3) theoretically more reliable than imaging to another HD. If you presume the image to hard drive is always copied "perfectly", then they would be the same. When your HD is "imaged", the software uses algorithmic conversions of the data to create one very large file.. which it plays back to "restore the image". If there is any corruption in that image file, the whole thing is lost. With cloning and there is a bit of a copy error (which there sometimes is... just as there is when imaging), only the affected function or program is damaged while the rest is OK. While I've not cloned to a HD, I have to optic media... and I just hate it... lots of coasters. Lots of worry that I'll get "corrupted file" message when trying to restore even though I verified the file when the image is made. No such worries with cloning.... and did I say cloning was MUCH FASTER?
Not sure what you are referring to about these copy errors, if we didnt trust a hard drive to store/retrieve data exactly bit for bit as written then PC's wouldnt be where they are today. Who would use spreadsheets if data randomly changed without warning? Sure there are low-level errors but it is handled at the physical drive level and are transparent to the application unless something really bad has happened with the drive. Also I think your conclusion that any corruption of the Acronis image renders it completely useless (vs corruption of a clone only affecting a single program or file) is incorrect but its a moot point - if you don't trust hard drives to store data (either the original data or an image backup) then its pretty much a lost cause to begin with. You make it sound like every time you write a sector its a gamble that it was written properly and will be read back the same way. If you like cloning because its faster thats fine but that would seem to limit you to a single backup and also require a duplicate drive in each machine to be cloned. With image backups I can store them from several machines on a single network device (NAS) and store multiple copies so I can recover from earlier backups as well (not just the most recent)
If concerned about image reliability. Why not make an image to optical media. Then verify it on your spare disk (maybe have a spare copy in case it gets hit by alpha particles). Then save it for restoration. For the next 3-12 months just make clones to either media. Then repeat this cycle. This would give fast restoration with a verified image. Then fast update to current with a clone. Would that meet everyones needs and concerns?
The backup system needed is one in which, if things go terribly wrong, you can have everything working within an hour or so. Lets assume your hard drive completely crashes. You could go out and buy another hard drive from Office Depot, but then you need to copy everything very quickly back. One solution is the push button 500 GB backup system that I saw on buy.com. Seems simple and reliable. You could probably copy everything back very quickly if a major problem arises. You could also buy one of those dual type hard drives that has a secondary system in the event of failure. However, for myself, I dont want to buy any new equipment just yet. I just want to use what I have. If I was trading full-time, I can imagine that I would probably have to have an emergency plan and redundant systems.
That's right. The problem with imaging is that everything has to be right or all is considered corrupt and lost. It's a good idea to verify an "apparently" good image before putting it away as good for restoration. Yet, on optical media I've had verified images be corrupt when trying to restore only weeks or a few months later.
You'd be wrong. When restoring an image, as soon as the restoration finds something not perfect, it indicates "file corrupt" and stops the restoration. And, as there is only one big algorithmic file, the entire restoration is lost.
Correct on all points. Each image [file] is really like a System Restore point in WinXP, except each is an image of your entire hard drive. And as there is never any perfect system... with all of your images stored on a single network device, you run the risk of losing all images if you lose the device. And as my machines are not networked, I just keep 3 or 4 hard cloned drives in various states of "current". I could handle quite a lot of adversity with only minimal downtime.
So is the best approach gnome (seeking a good strategy for myself)? Periodically make an identical image on a spare hard drive (and verify). More frequently, clone the drive to DVDs When a failure occurs - swap in the verified hard drive or restore image from it (are both ok solutions?). Update with the latest clone (is there any risk that this process would screw up the verified hard drive?)
"... be able to restore system in an hour or so...." That's right. If your hard drive "completely crashes", quickly getting another HD probably wouldn't help. You need to be able to read the crashed HD to get info off of it. ANY kind of backup system is better than none. When trouble comes, you just have to hope that yours is good enough. (I also have an external backup drive cloned of my wife's laptop. While it wouldn't be a biggie for hers to get fouled, at least I can restore it in minutes rather than hours reinstalling from scratch.) Additional HDs, especially with rebates, are cheap.
Unfortunately, optic media are not especially reliable... even after they've been "verified". However, if that's all you did at least you'd have a chance of restoration. Plus, they are slow to make and you can burn a lot of coasters trying to get a good image. (When imaging, you might need to burn 6-10 CDs... and they're all part of one big file. If any part of the file creation doesn't go properly, the "entire file" is toast and so are all 6-10 CDs you were burning. You don't usually burn coasters one-at-a-time, but more like a half-dozen or more.... it's really quite aggravating.) And cloning is such a snap! Also, while it does not make "images", Casper XP 3.0, is very good and fast at cloning.