Will do John – cheers Reg

(With apologies to John for butting in here)

EaseUS is by far the most feature limited of the three major free versions. You can read a brief rundown/comparison of the three major free imaging options here: https://davescomputertips.com/macrium-reflect-free-version-to-be-retired/

Hi Dave,

Sounds like Hasleo is adding features and Easeus is removing them. If you try Hasleo, comment back here and let us know how it compares to Easeus.

Hi Reg,
I was able to save backups to storage attached to my network, but I was only able to select drives for backup that were on my PC. Therefore, I am going to guess that you will not be able to back up one NAS storage drive to another. But, after you have it set up, let us know whether or not you can.

Hi Adrian,
Terminology definitions might be getting in the way here (see Jim’s Disk, Disc comment above). I’ve heard people refer to a mapped drive as a network share. In my tests, I tested a drive attached to my network with the “Add Network Location” method. Hasleo was able to save to that.

If you mean another computer on the same network with a shared folder, I did not test this. Also, I’m not currently in a location where I can set this up to test.

Hey MB,

Yes, I am well aware of what cloning involves. I think you might be confusing “disk” with “disc”. “Disk” refers to a drive, whether that be an SSD or HDD. “Disc” refers to a CD or DVD.

Cloning every few months, even with additional data backups, means that the clone is seldom up-to-date and, if/when the clone is required, any system changes, software updates and/or Windows updates installed since the clone was created will need to be installed again.

I create system images at regular 2-week intervals plus immediately following any Windows updates. I store 3-4 image backups on a single external USB hard drive, deleting the oldest image each time I create a new one. Consequently, if/when I need to restore an image backup, it is always up-to-date.

By the way; it takes about 3-4 minutes to restore an image backup on my system. So, the difference in time to be back up and running again following a disaster, whether swapping out a cloned drive or restoring an image backup, would be entirely negligible.

Hi Mindblower,
I finally had some free time and researched to see what Aomei had to say. First, Jim was right (of course), you can only have one clone on a disk as opposed to images where you can have multiple. Another disadvantage of clone vs image is that images can be compressed so they use less space. Also, images can be mounted. Aomei recommends images for backups and clones for migrating. In the second file, they even recommend imaging before making a clone. I suspect that the image file may have more loss prevention built in than the clone file (but this is just a guess). Therefore, I’d suggest that you may be overthinking it and may want to switch to using images as backups instead of cloning.
https://www.ubackup.com/articles/disk-image-vs-disk-clone.html
https://www.ubackup.com/help/Differences-between-Backup-and-Clone.html
In any case, whatever you decide to do, it is important to have some kind of backup. As you can see from my method above, I like to have different layers of backups.

John. As I mentioned to Jim, using a cloned disk means it is as close to a fresh install because it previously worked on that computer. Am I over thinking my method? What you mentioned is totally more work, but everyone has their way of working and I can respect that, Mindblower!

Jim. I should of mentioned that I clone the entire drive and do not use disks. Had a problem restoring an image read/write cd years ago, so I avoid using them, even when I verified the disks. It might be a bit more expensive, but it does assist me now, Mindblower!

Thanks Jim!

Cloning is fine as a backup system but it does require additional disks. The biggest difference, I guess, is that multiple image backups can be stored on a single disk whereas cloning requires a separate disk per clone.

Hi Mindblower,

I’ve never even thought of making clones as backups instead of image backups. I can tell you what I do, though. On all my PC’s, I partition the main drive into 3 partitions, the system partition (technically the system will create a few small partitions, too), a data partition, and an image partition. I set up my system to store all data on the data partition. OS & apps go on the system partition.

Every month, I create a system image. Every week I create a partition image of the data partition. All images get copied to the images partition (I keep at least a few of each depending on space, the oldest rotate out). All images get copied onto my NAS (I keep even more copies here). Note, I also have a file backup program that keeps copies of specific files (mostly data but a few setup files from OS) that copies data onto my NAS. It runs every hour or so to grab any changes. I also have a cloud backup system that saves chosen data files. It runs once a day. Almost everything is automated.

When I set up a new computer, I prefer to install everything clean. So I don’t really do much cloning. I have never had an issue if I needed to restore an image. Perhaps Jim will comment on the advantages or disadvantages of making clones as backups instead of backup images.