This is the transfer of all data from the old drive ("donor") to a new one ("recipient"). Everything is copied without exception: operating system with drivers, installed programs, photos, music and so on. After cloning and replacing the disk, you do not need to remember passwords, all files will be in their usual places.

Why clone a hard drive?

This operation is carried out for the following purposes:

1. To use a new and faster drive. A typical case is replacing a slow HDD with a modern SSD. This will significantly speed up the responsiveness of Windows, and due to cloning, the upgrade of the computer will be as comfortable as possible for the user. All shortcuts and settings will remain unchanged, but the system will become faster.
2. Not to reinstall the operating system. For example, after buying a new computer, you want everything to be like on the old one and without reinstallations. This will happen when information is transferred from the "donor" to the "recipient", and the procedure itself will require relatively little action and attention from the user.
3. To synchronize work for different computers. Becomes more and more common distant work. Cloning hard drive will allow you to deploy a full-fledged workplace where it is convenient and there can be as many such places as you like.
4. To do backup data. You can lose information on the drive at any time - nothing lasts forever. Thanks to cloning in a few clicks, you can also be safe in case of force majeure to have a fully working "cast" of all data.

It is important that the "donor" does not have viruses - clone the drive only after a thorough check for malware.

Utilities and programs for cloning

There are many cloning applications. Some, specially designed to perform such an operation, are suitable for inexperienced users who value the simplicity of the process. Other programs have wider functionality. In them, creating a disk clone is just one of the many options available.

Connect your new drive to your computer before using any application. To do this, it is convenient to use an external hard drive pocket.

Renee Becca

A simple utility that everyone will understand. With its help, you can clone a storage medium in a few clicks. The algorithm of actions consists of the following steps:

• download, install and run the application;
• select in the left pane "Clone". With Renee Becca, you can also clone only certain local drives or transfer only the operating system to a new drive. The corresponding items are located below in the initial window of the program;

• indicate "donor" and "recipient". To get a complete copy of the "donor", check the box "Make target disk bootable ..." at the bottom of the window. On the left, expand the "More" list and check the box next to "Clone of all sectors ...". Then start the operation by clicking on "Clone";

A functional program that costs a lot, but a demo version is also suitable for cloning. To download it, follow the link and enter your e-mail. After launching the application, do the following:

• select "donor". It is important to specify not just a local drive, but the entire drive. To do this, click right click mouse on the line with this drive and click on "Clone basic disk";

• specify "recipient". When choosing this disk, remember that the data on it will be overwritten, and its volume cannot be less than the size of the occupied information on the "donor";

• so that the "recipient" is exactly the same as the "donor", check the box next to the "One to One" line in the next window;

• in Acronis Disc Director, any manipulations with drives must always be confirmed separately. To do this, at the top of the window, click on "Apply pending operations" - only after that the cloning will begin;

If you do not use the program for commercial purposes, then you do not need to pay for it. You just need to go to the developer's website, click on "Home Use", specify an e-mail and confirm it - you will receive a corresponding letter. After downloading, installing and running " Macrium Reflect» do the following:

• on the home screen, click on "Clone this disk";

• on the next window, tick all local drives on the "donor";

• at the bottom, click on "Select a disk to clone ..." - a selection window will appear, where specify the "donor";

• at the end of the operation, click on "Finish";

Paragon Drive Backup Personal

A free utility, the capabilities of which are enough for cloning. It is available for download on this page, and after downloading, installing and running, do the following:

• create your own account in the app. This is done in a few clicks - you only need to specify your e-mail and personal data. After that, on the left, click on "My new backup". On the right, specify "donor" in the "Backup source" field and "recipient" in the "Destination" field;

• start cloning by clicking on "Back up now";

Simple and free app. To download, go to the developer's website and select the version with Russian localization.

After installation and launch, follow these steps in sequence:

• indicate "donor". If you need to clone not the entire drive, but only one of the local drives, then check the box "Show partitions" and select the required local drives. Then click on "Next";

• Specify the "recipient" and click on "Next" again.

• the settings window will appear. You can not change anything and click on "Next";

• a window for setting the sizes of the "donor" and "receiver" will appear. It is enough to tick the option "Resize partitions proportionally" and click on "Next";

• in the last window, confirm the start of the operation by clicking on "Start copying".

A good utility that has a demo version, the capabilities of which are enough for a one-time disk cloning. After downloading, installing and running the application, follow these steps:

• in top panel click on "Clone" - unfortunately, the program does not have a translation into Russian;

When replacing a hard drive with a new one, for example, a more capacious or high-speed one, as a rule, it becomes necessary to transfer information to it from the old drive.

If you do it manually - reinstall the system, programs and copy user files, then you can spend a whole day.

It is much more convenient to entrust this to automation - special programs for cloning hard drives. With their help, all files, settings and the system itself will simply “move to a new place of residence” in the form in which they were on the old media.

Cloning a hard disk is a low-level sector-by-sector transfer of data from one medium to another. In this case, the clone disk will be an exact copy of the original disk.

Cloning a hard drive

To create clone discs, a lot of paid and free programs. Among them there are universal ones that work with any HDD and SSD, and highly specialized ones designed for drives of a certain brand, for example, only Samsung or only Western Digital.

Consider five popular and easiest to use programs for cloning hard disks on SSD or HDD of any manufacturer.

EASEUS Disk Copy

Farstone RestoreIT Pro is primarily a system and user data recovery tool after crashes, virus attacks, changes and accidental deletions.

As such, this program does not create disk clones, but it can create backups of any information on them.

The backup frequency in RestoreIT Pro can be configured at least hourly. And restoring to a saved copy is done by pressing one button.

RestoreIT Pro features:

• the ability to restore the system even after the bootloader is damaged;
• 2 backup modes - full and cumulative (saving only changed data);
• monitoring the entire disk or only selected partitions;
• storing the entire history of file changes, not just the last saved version.

The disadvantages of the program are a paid license ($24.95) and the lack of a disk cloning function.

But what if you don’t want to buy the same acronis, you’re too lazy to poke around in all sorts of clonezillas, but make a full clone system disk in order to, say, transfer it to a new one (or HDD), or maybe, let's say, to put it on a shelf as a static backup?

Let's see.

How to make a full copy of a disk, - SSD or HDD

Well, let's figure it out. It will be, as you understood from the subtitle, about the HDClone program, which has a free version, supports the Russian language, is insanely easy to manage, and also has nice functionality.

At the first start, you will be unobtrusively told that you can get more goodies if you buy one of the extended versions of the program. You can safely ignore this information (or study it on the developer's website) and click on the "Close" button.

The main window of the program is simple, concise and provides access to its functionality. Functionality in free version simple:

• Disk cloning (we will consider it);
• Creating a disk image;
• Creating backups (including backups not of the entire disk, but of partitions);
• Test tool ;
• Sector-by-sector disk browsing tool.

Everything is done extremely simply and literally in two clicks, but let's still consider, for example, creating a complete copy of one disk to another (let's say we need to transfer Windows from HDD to SSD), for which we click on the appropriate button.

At the first stage, we will be asked to choose source disk or the partition we want to copy.

It is logical that at the second stage they will offer to select the disk (or partition) to which we want to make a copy.

You will now be prompted to set up partitions. Most often, this is not necessary and a checkmark is enough " Resize partitions proportionally", but if you suddenly need some tweaks, you can do it here.

It goes without saying that a warning will appear stating that the data of the disk where the cloning will be performed will be completely deleted. It is worth taking it seriously so as not to lose anything of value.

Next, if you did everything correctly (however, even if it was wrong), the disk cloning process will begin. During it, you will be reminded once again that there are paid versions that allow you to copy faster:

Time, of course, is money, but with such a process and a difference, I still choose money, especially since while the process is going on, you can do other most useful things.

At the end of the process, you will be prompted to make a partition adjustment (this is indeed necessary). If you don’t understand, then you can use the automatic option, but for the handy ones, there is a manual setting.

At the end, you can see the result, as well as see some details. At this point, the process can be considered complete.

Additional functionality

What else? Well, perhaps I’ll say that in the main window of the program, in the lower right corner, you can call up the settings menu (by clicking on the wrench icon) and create bootable USB / CD / DVD media, which is no more difficult to manage than the program itself, as well as see the instructions and do other little things.

The SpeedTest section, as mentioned, allows you to test disks for the speed of the media in sequential and random reading (although for me, this is not enough and is better to use).

Well, DiskView will allow you to look indecently deep, right into the very sectors of any HDD / SSD media. Unless, of course, you know why it is needed.

On the sim, perhaps everything.
Let's move on to the afterword.

Afterword

This is such a wonderful tool that, it seems to me, will come in handy to anyone who cares about his data and / or who has ever faced the need to move from disk to disk (to the same SSD).

As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, additions, and so on, then welcome to the comments on this article.

An image of a hard disk or one of its partitions is a complete "cast" containing all the information placed on it. Recently, they are increasingly used by both home and corporate users. The main scope of images is information backup. And there is nothing surprising in this. Copying partition images allows you to archive and, accordingly, restore, if necessary, not only some files and folders, but also the operating system along with all the software installed in it. In addition, "casts" of hard drives allow you to solve some other tasks, for example, transferring the old OS to a new hard drive if it is replaced, maintaining computers in the same state (relevant, for example, for educational institutions) and so on. To date, there are not so many products on the market that are designed to work with images. One of them is software O&O DiskImage, developed by O&O Software. Today we, dear readers, will consider this utility in detail and find out all its advantages and disadvantages.

So, O&O DiskImage. This program allows you to create images of entire hard drives and external drives(external hard drives, USB drives, etc.) or the partitions they contain. "Casts" are absolutely identical to the original, and therefore they can really be used to restore the operating system, roll back to the previous state of the computer and solve other similar problems. It is worth noting that the program does not allow you to copy data from removable drives: floppy disks, CDs and DVDs, and the like. However, such a task occurs extremely rarely, and therefore the absence of this possibility cannot be called a disadvantage.

Images created using the program in question can be of several types. The first of them is a "cast" of used sectors of user-specified partitions. Its main advantage over the full image is to save disk space and reduce copying time. In this case, all significant (not deleted at the time of image creation) information will be saved. The second option is an incremental image. Its essence is to record only the changes that have occurred since the last archiving. This approach is very good when regular imaging is required. Thanks to him, not only the volume of images is reduced and time is saved for their creation, but the user also gets the opportunity to access different versions of the same files edited at different times. When choosing the third type of images, a complete "cast" of the entire hard drive or its individual sections is created at the sector level. This option is best for copying discs formatted in non-standard formats. file systems. Besides, full copy allows you to restore previously deleted information not only using the original (which is not always convenient and appropriate), but also from the image taken from it. And finally, the last available type of images is very similar to the previous one. However, it is created using a high-speed low-level interface. Thanks to this, you can create images of encrypted and hidden files.

When creating an image, the user can use some additional features of the O&O DiskImage program. The first one is information compression. Compression can either be turned on or off. In the first case, the image will take up less space, but the process of its creation will be longer. When choosing the second option, the opposite is true: the "cast" will be more voluminous, but data copying will be faster. Second additional function- automatic cutting of the image into parts of the volume specified by the user. This is very convenient in cases where the file is planned to be transferred somewhere using a mobile or removable drive, or transferred via the Internet. The cutting list immediately contains all the most frequently used volumes (1, 100, 650, 700 MB, 1, 4.5 GB). In addition, the user can set the size he needs manually.

The third additional feature implemented in the O&O DiskImage program is encryption created images. This feature allows you to reliably protect backups from unauthorized access and use. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) technology is used as a cryptographic algorithm, which is a US standard and is very common all over the world. The length of the encryption keys used is 256 bits. At present, it is considered sufficient: with the current level of development of electronics, it is impossible to select a key by a complete enumeration of all options.

The next function is the so-called file filters. There are two of them. One allows you to specify a list of files excluded from the created images. This can be done by explicitly specifying specific objects, as well as using templates (symbols "*" and "?" are used as masks). Thanks to this filter, you can exclude temporary files from copying, backup copies automatically created by various software, and other data that the user obviously does not need, thus saving time and disk space. The second filter is very similar to the first. But with its help, you can exclude files not from the image, but from the list of compressible objects. For example, it makes sense to list archives and other already compressed files in it. Re-compressing them does not give a noticeable reduction in the volume of the image, but it takes time and computer resources.

In addition to those listed above, there are several more functions that the user can use when creating images. This is the ability to add a text comment to each of them, block the section for the duration of the program (to avoid changing files), enable ignoring broken blocks.

So, with the process of creating images, we, dear readers, have figured it out. Now let's see what we can do with them. The first option is to write the image back to HDD. Moreover, it does not have to be the same hard drive at all. Thanks to this, images can be used not only as backups, but also for transferring data to other computers.

The second option for extracting information is to connect the image as a virtual removable disk. When using this function, another section appears in the operating system, in which all the data from the "cast" is located. You can work with its contents in the same way as with any other folders and files. This allows you to restore not all information from a backup, but only objects that are relevant to the user.

In addition, existing images can be converted by changing some of their parameters. In some situations, this feature can be very useful. For example, the user already has a "cast" once created, containing important information. And he had a need to transfer it on a mobile carrier or transfer it via the Internet. In this case, to ensure the security of information, he can simply convert it to a new one by enabling cryptographic protection.

Speaking of O&O DiskImage as a solution for Reserve copy information, one of its serious advantages can be noted. We are talking about the built-in module for writing information to CDs and DVDs. The program in question can do this on its own without requiring any additional software. True, it also has a very significant drawback. For unknown reasons, the developers of O&O DiskImage did not implement the ability to work on a schedule in their offspring. Meanwhile, the process of creating backups should be regular and as automated as possible.

The O&O DiskImage program allows you not only to create images and recover information from them. In addition to working with "casts", it implements another rather useful feature- copying hard disk partitions. Its essence lies in the possibility of accurately transferring content from one hard drive to another. The solution of such a problem may be required, for example, when replacing a computer hard drive with a new one.

And finally, let's look at the interface of the O&O DiskImage program. We note right away that it is only in English, which, of course, is not very good. However, its simplicity compensates for this shortcoming. After starting the program, the user sees the main window, divided into two parts. It conveniently lists all the commands and all the information that you may need to work. An additional help for the user is the mechanism of profiles. Its essence lies in the ability to configure all the parameters of certain operations and save them. Thanks to this, it is possible to avoid constant change options before each start of a process. Thus, we can conclude that, despite the English-language interface, the O&O DiskImage program is quite convenient to use, and its development does not cause difficulties even for novice users.

Every computer user sooner or later begins to wonder: "How to create a disk image?" It is quite simple to do this, moreover, the process does not take much time. But for this it is recommended to read this article, as it contains step-by-step instruction, which will help to understand the issue in more detail.

General provisions

There are several ways to create a disk image yourself. In any case, we will have to work with special software, which greatly speeds up the process and makes it much easier. It is worth saying that the image, which may have an ISO extension, is a regular file stored on your hard drive. The only difference is that it has a size much smaller than the original one, and is also launched using special programs. You probably noticed that most often the image is created for games, service files that take up a lot of space. Opens ISO too different programs, and in this article we will consider which ones. By the way, the extension does not have to be exactly this, but it is used most often. It is impossible not to draw your attention to the fact that great importance has the integrity of the files, it is advisable to check them with an antivirus before starting work. After that, we proceed to the practical part.

What is a good image

First, let's look at a simple example. For example, if you have a game disc, you need to use an optical drive to run it. If one is missing or defective, then this already indicates that the image is an excellent solution for you. The same applies to damaged disks. Old computers and laptops often have a faulty laser, so writing or reading a disc is quite problematic. In addition, if you have a good internet connection, you can download images from the web, you don't even need to buy anything, you just need to find what you need. Another example is installing an operating system from a USB flash drive or disk, which is extremely convenient. The image will be unpacked quickly enough and without errors. As noted above, if the file weighs 11 gigabytes, and you have a 4.5 GB disk, then the only way to write the document to the existing media is to make an image of it. So you can achieve the volume you need.

Working with Daemon Tools

One of the most popular and simple programs to create images. It is completely free and constantly updated, it supports most modern extensions, and therefore is in great demand. To start, we need installed program and a disk inserted into the drive, it is his image that we will learn to create. Most often, the Daemon Tools icon is displayed in the tray (lower right corner on the desktop). We right-click and see a pop-up menu, there you should select "Create disk image". A menu will open in front of you. Here we can find the drive, the place where the image will be saved. You will also need to select an extension. ISO or IMG is recommended, but if you are interested in a specific format, then choose it. The name of the image is also indicated here. After that, select "Save". Click "Start" and wait for the end of the process. Upon completion, close the window and go to the folder where we saved the file.

Creating a Hard Drive Image: An Introduction

It's one thing to just learn how to write to a USB flash drive or disk, and quite another to be able to create backups. To do this, we will use free software, a program called Acronis. Although it is worth noting that this is far from the only option that allows you to work with hard drive. If you are using an operating Windows system 7.8, then there are built-in tools that allow you to create hard image disk. If this is a laptop, then there is also a standard utility called Recovery. It is worth saying a few words directly about Acronis, which was designed specifically to back up hard drives, boot them or restore them. It should be noted that the utility works when other programs are powerless, for example, even in cases where the operating system does not load. Well, now let's move on to the practical part of the question.

How to create a hard disk image using Acronis Images?

First of all, go to the program menu. Here you will see the line "Backup and Restore", which is what we need. Click and go to another section, where you need to select the item "Backing up disks and partitions". Pay special attention to disk management. You will be able to watch as many as 4 sections. Each of them is responsible for something. One of them, usually the largest, is the one where you have your operating system installed. The partition called System contains the recovery information. Recovery is the place where the factory settings of a computer or laptop are contained, and the unnamed section is of a system nature. So, select disk 1, aka My Passport, our backup will be placed here. The program will prompt you to make a copy of all sections of your computer or laptop. It is worth noting right away that nothing needs to be changed, we create a full backup of all partitions. It is advisable to pre-configure, for this we go into disk mode, put a checkmark in front of the hard drive and select the place where to save the image.

We continue to work with Acronis

After we have done all of the above, we move on to the next step, where we need to get down to business, and since creating a disk image is not very difficult, it will take no more than 10 minutes. It is best to use a flash drive or portable hard drive. This is where you should create and save a backup copy. Although it could be a hard disk partition, just not the one where the operating system is installed. Then you can click "Archive", although before that it is better to configure the backup settings. Go to "Advanced" and check the box next to the line "Archive in sector-by-sector mode." Also select "Validate backup after it is created". Exit this menu and start archiving. When finished, go to the folder and see if our file is saved.

What to look out for

It should be noted that it is imperative to create bootable media. Since you already know how to create a disk image, let's move on to the next step. This is needed in the event of an emergency. For example, the computer does not turn on due to errors. For this we use the same Acronis. Select "Create bootable media" from the main menu. Then follow the instructions, and then insert a USB flash drive or disk into the port. The connected device will appear in the window. In the menu, check the boxes next to all the lines that you see. Click "Next" and select the device, after which we begin the creation. A window will appear with the process, at the end you will see a dialog box confirming the successful creation of bootable media. If you need to restore the system, you can do it either directly from a running system or through the BIOS. In the main menu, select the "Restore" item and follow the prompts.

Conclusion

I would like to say that creating a regular image and a hard disk image are somewhat similar. In principle, there is nothing complicated here, but there is one “but”, you need to use only those programs that you understand, or have at hand detailed instructions. If you do something wrong, then there is a possibility that you will have to take the hard drive to a service, where a considerable amount will be charged for restoring its work. After reading, you should have fully understood how to create a disk image: both hard and regular. The main thing is to follow the instructions and not be nervous if you didn’t manage to do something on the first try.