How to create BackUp of Your system/machine by Cloning

Today, creating backup of data has become a very common issue of concern. Because most of the people aren't aware of its process and details to backup data. So, you need to know first how to take back up of your system by cloning hard drive. 

 

Here, I wouldn't go into its significance and reasons of why it is essential to backup your data and clone your Mac disk.

But I will give you expert's methods and products that you can use to create clone backup of your drive and hence protect your data from any future disaster. Here, I will discuss this information for both MS Windows and Apple's Mac machines.

But, First of all, I will define "concept of cloning and backups” .

Cloning refers to an exact replica of your hard drive, onto a second internal or external hard drive. These clones are bootable means in case of drive failure and crash you can boot your system using clone copy of your drive.

 

I have heard many people arguing that cloning isn't actually a method of backing up. Although it is true upto some extent but not completely. It is a great way of taking backup as it gives you bootable backups or clones. There are so many benefits of having bootable backup and some them are mentioned here-

1.You can test applications before actually installing them into your Mac drive.

2.One Can perform troubleshooting and move Mac to SSD or some other external drive without the need of reinstallation.

3.You can boot your Mac in unfavorable situations and also need not to reinstall apps while migrating them onto some external drive. 

 

Now, after finishing cloning process, you should make sure whether it done correctly or not. In order to check this you have to give a try to booting your Mac using clone drive that whether it is bootable or not! It means, you could be able to start your machine up from that clone of your drive in exactly the same way as you normally start with your primary Mac drive.

There are several benefits of having bootable backups one important is it gives you assurity for the protection and security of data and OS. For example: If your drive get failed to boot or crash you could have to wait for several hours to even weeks until it get fixed and your data is restored. But , if you have bootable clone of your drive you could back to business in a minute or two by booting up Mac with your clone drive.

Now, if you want to replace your drive with the new one, meanwhile you can continue your work and everything will be exactly the way it was.

Second but most essential benefit of Cloning your drive in this way also saves your money and time by keeping away recovery softwares for Mac. For replacement of drive you can simply take primary Mac drive out and put your new drive at its place.

Cloning of Mac OS X will take hardly 5-10 minutes in comparison to spend hours in purchasing data recovery software and OS X dvd.

Fortunately, in Mac OS X there are several options to create bootable clone of drive then Windows. But, it's difficult to choose the most suitable one according to our backup requirements.

After a good research, I have found a couple of Mac cloning apps that can duplicate your drive.

First talk a little about Windows cloning/backup utilities which creates exact cloned copies. Like: XXClone. This is a free cloning program which does a great job. I also used it mysself. The only problem with this application is that it is compatible only with Windows XP not with Windows Vista or Windows 7. You can easily find this program by Googling "XXClone".

I have another good option for Windows users that work well with all versions of Windows, it is Seagate DiscWizard. Discwizard is also free software from Seagate's website. One can find its download link by Googling "Seagate DiscWizard download".

But, in case of Segate Disc Wizard, the minor problem is -- it require at least one of your drives ( source drive or destination drive) to be either a Seagate brand drive or Maxtor brand drive.

But, there's a good chance you will found one of them as your main internal drive of your PC Because, these brand drives are popular,extremely common and easy to find in any local computer store. Only the availability of one of these two completes its running requirement.

I've been using Maxtor and recently downloaded Seagate DiscWizard. It seems to have no issues as long as one of your drive is Seagate or Maxtor.

Now, lets come to Mac operating system clone applications. When considering Apple Mac applications of backup and cloning people are found to be a bit confused about selection of softwares. Actually the problem lies in having less number of quality products. I have found three good softwares for Mac:- CCC, Stellar Drive Clone, SuperDuper etc. Although there are many Mac cloning software like chronosync, get backup but I figure out those three best after reading many user reviews.

All three are good products but I've been using Stellar Drive Clone as my main cloning/backup program because a big percentage of experts have recommended this software as best. So, it is what I will recommend to my clients! CCC and superduper work in the similiar way, but Stellar Drive Clone is little different in its amazing features.

Unlike Seagatewizard on the PC, Stelar Drive Clone does not require any specific brand of drive. Infact, its 2.5version supports SSD(Solid State Drive). Unlike XXClone on the PC -- Stellar Drive Clone is compatible with allmost all versions of Mac from 10.3 to 10.8.3 Mountain lion. It supports both Intel, PowerPC(G3 or later) but CCC current version will not support your Mac if it is several years old. 

 

Time taken by CCC is large in comparison to Stellar Drive Clone. Although it depends upon the quantity of data you have taken for backed up but CCC consumes comparatively very large time while taking first backup. 

 

A good thing with Stellar Drive Clone is you can continue your work while it performing clone/backup process. But CCC gives irritating pop up ads that interuupt in your work.

But you can start it and walk away, so it's not as bad as it sounds. This should be done at least once a month, maybe more frequently if you plan to make a lot of changes to the computer, like installing new software, or updating your system with a major update to Windows or the Mac OS.

Basically Stellar Drive Clone can give you the best of cloning and imaging and ensures your datta safety. It enables you to create Mac disk image that you can restore in case of hard drive failure.

Stellar Drive Clone supports SSD and also to window file formats like ExFat, FAT32, MBR Partition scheme. One can take backup of windows data partition on Mac drive. So, it can take backup of your multiboot Mac including windows data.