Basic Terminology for Disk Imaging & Hard Drive Cloning
Drive CLONING » is the process of duplicating either an individual partition, or the contents of an entire hard drive onto a (physically) different hard disk drive. After cloning, the destination drive/partition looks identical to the source.
Drive IMAGING » is the process of creating a special file (referred to as an image, or an image-flle, or a Recovery Point) that contains the contents of (either) an individual partition, or an entire hard drive.
If you create an image (file) of your hard drive, and restore it to a new hard drive, that would (effectively) be the same as cloning your drive.
For this reason, some people use the term cloning when they're really talking about imaging. But this confuses the issue. And confusion is a dangerous thing when using a cloning program.
Home users typically use drive imaging to backup their hard drives .. far more than drive cloning.
Images can be 'restored' at a later date, should something go terribly wrong with your system (such as contracting a destructive virus, or finding your hard drive dead). This is why the term "image" is sometimes used (as a verb) to mean "backup" .. as in, "I imaged my drive after installing Windows, and again after I installed all my programs."
Unlike the cloning process, images are normally restored to the same drive/partition from whence they were created (provided the source hard drive didn't fail mechanically, in which case you would need to restore the image to a new hard drive).
90% of the time, regular home-users use the imaging capabilities of a cloning program to create a backup image (file) that is stored on a drive other than (physically different from) the source drive. (An external USB drive is a popular storage destination.)
Storing a backup image on the same drive as its source is considered unwise because, if the drive fails (dies), then the back-up image will die with it. (.. since you can't access a file on a dead drive.) This is the #1 rule of drive imaging » always backup to a (physically) different hard drive (such as an external USB drive).
DRIVE » This morphic term can refer to either an entire physical hard drive or an individual partition (such as your C drive) depending upon the context in which the term is used. So its use can be confusing.
On the next page we'll discuss the differences between hot-imaging and cold-imagining, including their pro's and con's.