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Difference between Disk Clone and System Clone

Hi,


Backupper v2.2 has both Disk Clone and System Clone options. I'm a little confused about which I should use to transfer the entire contents of my laptop HDD to a new Samsung 850 Pro SSD.

Both options seem to do the same thing but System Clone has only been available with v2.1. Has System Clone now replaced Disk Clone?


Thanks. image

Comments

  • I have the same question. About to do the exact same thing as you but not sure which one to pick 

  • I went with Disk Clone and it was fine. image

  • Thanks ganon. Looks like I chose the right option as my laptop with new SSD is performing perfectly. image

  • What Ganon said - ONE caveat though.  AOMEI might not recognize a few of the many possible primary parittions your brand of PC is using for a Windows 64 bit UEFI booted system.


    Becasue UEFI can have a lot more primary paritions than the old MBR system some manufactures have 6 or more primary paritions.  Some are the standard recovery parition and the Windows boot parition etc.  My new laptop has 4 additional ones (plus the one data parition I carved out of the C: drive space).  Not backing up these spurious extra partitions may keep your PC from working right should an entire recovery become necessary. 


    I manually select my backup partitions and make sure it backs up all these "extra" partitions and make sure to leave my data parition OUT.  I back up my data a different way.

  • edited February 2015

    Yes, I agree about UEFI.  As long as the disk is smaller than 2TB I see no real advantage ot it at all, it breaks so many "good old" tools and methods we have honed over the decades. I know MBRs can get hosed aweful quick but dang, the can be fixed pretty quicl;y too with the right tools. UEFI holds no real tangable benefits to be in the typical desktop environment.  Servers?  Yes.  desktps, not so much. 


    This issue of unreliable UEFI restorations is one thing that is keeping me form firmly jumping into bed with AOMEI.  The last version seems to fix most of the issues but still fails to convert the drive from MBR to UEFI if the drive happened to of been used as MBR the last time.  This would not affect a lot of users, but will affect SOME.


    It really irks me that manufacturers have to put in 6 or more primary parition too, enoughs enough already!

  • I purchased Backupper Pro 2.2 for the express purpose of cloning my existing system HD drive, which is the boot drive, to a new larger HDD.

    I am using a Dell XPS 730x PC, Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.


    Using Backupper, I did a dick clone with no apparent problems, but when I removed my original boot drive and tried to boot off the clone, I got an error message in a control screen, stating that bootmgr is missing.

    @ Moderator or Techo, kindly provide step by step instructions as to how to clone my existing HDD, so that the clone works exactly like my existing cloned HDD.

    Thanks in anticipation.


  • My Acer's HDD had 3 partitions:-


    PQSERVICE - size 14.37Gb NTFS

    SYSTEM RESERVED - size 598Mb NTFS

    ACER (C:) - size 223.52Gb NTFS


    All three partitions were successfully cloned on the new SSD. The only issue I had was that PQSERVICE was assigned a drive letter and was visible in Explorer. After removing its drive letter it became invisible.


    On first boot everything was fine and Windows loaded. Disk Clone worked fine here.

  • edited February 2015
    double post.


  • "Using Backupper, I did a dick clone with no apparent problems"


    I think the problem is that you did a DICK clone instead of a DISK clone  image


    We kind of got off on a tangent here.  Is your OS onthe original HDD a UEFI bootable drive?  If so then examine the disk by booting off the original and putting the "new" larger drive in as a second.  If the system IS UEFI then you MUST boot to the AOMEI rescue system via UEFI to do the backup AND the restoration. if you're doing it form the OS on the original disk then that's a given already.


    If it IS UEFI it will show as a GPT type disk with a partition marked as an EFI parition. My first guess is you got caught with the issue I cited, AOMEI failing to convert an MBR disk to GPT when recovering.  If the new disk was previously used as a spare somewhere this may be the case, it's an MBR disk instead of a GPT.  You can convert it to GPT using Windows Disk management or the command line via diskpart. However the drive must not have ANY partitions on it to convert it. So you need to start over, delete all the parititons and convert the disk and then put the image back down on it.  Again, this is ONLY if the OS is bootingUEFI and the disk is marked wrongly as a MBR disk.  If it's already GPT then please ignore this paragraph.  Not many systems with Winodws 7 64 bit shipped UEFI, almost all Windows 8.1 64 bit DO ship UEFI. 


    You might want to look into their other product AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro. It can do a CLONE of the HDD.  I've never used it but it seems like a slightly better way to do this.


    I have looked long and hard at AOMEI, pertly becasue it's a small program and they have very favorable pricing for individuals and techs.  However there are a few show stopping issues they have yet to get solved. This MBR / GPT issue is one of themI can't get my company on board with them till they resolve these issues and we can faithfully restore an image to a HDD / SSD without incident or issue. I've found a few of their competitors that work perfectly, but price themselves too high ad have too huge an application.

  • A few tips for cloning a Windows 8 laptop drive. My Fujitsu one has all sorts of recovery partitions on it so do a full disc clone. i'm afraid i ended up using Paragon Hard Disk Manager as someone lent me a copy but i'm sure Backupper would work fine.


    Firstly create a Windows recovery cd/memory stick before you start. I then connected the SSD using an external usb enclosure and set it to clone.


    After cloning it if Windows won't boot up the new drive then stick your recovery disc in and try do an automatic repair. This didn't work for me. 


    Next get the command prompt up from the recovery disc advanced options  and type in:


    bootrec /fixmbr
    bootrec /fixboot
    bootrec /scanos
    bootrec /rebuildbcd


    this fixed mine. I got these tips from http://www.techspot.com/guides/630-windows-8-boot-fix/


    I would say the laptop is around 10x faster with an SSD rather than the crappy 5300rpm drive it came with so this is definitely worth doing.


  • @benners would you mind tell me which "few of their competitors that work perfectly" for cloning without touching the bootrec / bcd plese? 
    Thanks in advance                

  • benners & uccoffee, please see the IM I sent you.  I will avoid mentioning competitors in public on this manufacturers forum.

  • Please forgive me for bringing this question up again but I am still having problems

    understanding the difference between system clone and disk clone.

    Would it be possible in simple terms to state when you would use system clone

    and when you would use disk clone and why.   The example on the AOMEI site

    did not explain well enough for me to understand.


    1) If you are going from a smaller size disk to a larger,  in this case I want to use a larger destination drive 2TB and when the clone is completed the drive will look like a 2TB drive.

    Which method of cloning should I choose and why.


    2) Hard disk to SSD (SSD is 2TB or less) 


    3) Hard Disk MBR, to larger than 2TB GPT HD drive

        and have it bootable once I learn about UEFI


    Does it matter if the destination drive is smaller than source provided

    the data to be transfered has enough space to fit on the destination drive.

    Example,  1TB drive with 5GB of data cloning to a 500GB drive.

    In this case I would use the clone just as a back up if source drive

    should crash or fail.


    I came across AOMEI when I read on their site Backupper can convert and clone

    from a MBR to a greater than 2TB GPT drive and make it bootable.  This

    is something else I would like to try some day.  From my reading the

    mother board BIOS has to have UEFI which I believe my MSI Z87-G41 does

    but I an not sure to to configure for it.  The manual does not offer examples.


    Thanks

    Ken






  • The difference is that “SystemClone” will only Clone the partition which contains boot files and operatingsystem.

     While "DiskClone" will clone the entire hard disk including all your data on thedisk.

    Disk Clone is used to cloneone disk to another disk.

    Actually,when you do the disk clone, we will advice you do the system clone again for asthe double measure for the system.


  • RayProudfoot ,"I'm a little confused about which I should use to transfer the entire contents of my laptop HDD to a new Samsung 850 Pro SSD."

    You just want to transfer the data? Do you need to transfer the system?

    Maybe you need to do the backup and then do the universal restore.

  • @Admin. I think that RayProudfoots problem is solved by now. His question was more than a year ago. 2015.

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