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In order to be able to take a drive that you have backed up to and be able to swap it with your laptops drive so that you can start up your laptop without any apparent change, you have to clone that backup drive.
I have made this job easy by creating a sub program for Bax It!, Cloner, but there are other programs out there that do the same thing, but be warned, from what I have seen, they don't follow anything like my philosophy and policy so just stick with me and avoid getting eaten by a dragon.
Cloning needs to be a part of your backup policy, ideally, but backing up on it's own is infinitely better than doing neither. Cloning on it's own doesn't offer anything useful for most people. But the combination caters fully for the laptop disaster scenario.
Cloning changes a second drive into a drive that can be swapped with the main drive so that instead of having a useless laptop you have a renewed laptop.
Ideally when you backup (whatever backup program you use) you have the option to clone and the cloning is done as the final touch but it isn't necessary to re-clone the drive every time you backup.
There isn't much to choose from in making the choice whether to clone or just backup. If you clone then you have a second drive that can swap with your failed drive. If you don't clone then a failed main laptop drive will mean that you still have a major problem.
However, once you have overcome that problem by replacing the drive and then somehow re installing a system then you can use your backup to re install all your data and programs. This will still be a huge nuisance but you might be able to restore some of your system back to how it was. Bear in mind that this is uncharted territory so you will probably face snags in those system restore attempts - they may or may not achieve useful results.
Cloning on the other hand avoids those limitations and snags.
Having decided to backup and clone as your own policy you need a cloning program and as you probably realized my own program Cloner is the one I use and recommend you use as well.
This does not add any complication to your backup routine though as Bax It! controls the operations of Cloner which runs out of sight and in the background, so there is no additional learning or familiarization involved.
Now that you have kept up with my own philosophy and have decided you want to copy my policy on backing up and cloning it is time to move on to the next topic which is choosing and buying a second hard drive.
There is no doubt about the issue of cloning; just do it and save yourself huge problems.
My next articles move on to dealing with the all the points that need to be considered so that a cloned drive will actually swap with your existing laptop's hard drive and not simply turn out to be a clone that is next to impossible to make use of.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
5 June 2008
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