Solved Internal Backup Disk Drive vs Image File

kgarrett67 said:

I think that option would be user specific. If you need a quick means of getting your system back up and running, that would probably be a fast way to do that, provided you have easy access to your computer case.

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Yeah, very quick and can be verified under actual working conditions, just swap cables and ascertain that the substitute disk will boot with apps and user data.

But if you are like @Bree then you would need 3 substitute disks.

I also use Macrium Reflect 8.1.7401 and I make a manual daily backup, as I do a great deal of tinkering and try to use the least amount of Windows Software as possible. That being said, if one were to use Windows 11 with everything that comes with it, Edge and all of the apps, a backup would not be needed if you synced everything. With a problem, just do a clean install . There may be a handful of folks that do that???

Haydon said:

Yeah, very quick and can be verified under actual working conditions, just swap cables and ascertain that the substitute disk will boot with apps and user data.

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Come to think of it, I could do experiments for just a few dollars, I think. I have a spare Samsung portable SSD T7 500GB. I have also a spare 3.5" drive slot in my desktop machine.

What enclosure/adapter do I need to put the SSD in the drive slot?

This conversation is in the end arguing the merits of cloning to a drive so you can hotswap versus using image backups.

In many of the discussions, people are forgetting one crucial fact - hot swapping involves physical intervention.

Not only that there is only one copy, so you lose flexibility.

Most importantly, complete drive failures are quite rare. People often want to restore a earlier backup e.g. if something has gone wrong. You cannot do that with hots swap (or at least limited to date of backup of hot swap).

If you use Macrium Reflect Home, with its Rapid Delta Restore, you can revert to earlier version (I like @Bree keep several versions) very quickly - in most cases faster than you could hotswap devices.

Let's suppose something has glitched and you only have just detected it, but made a clone (Raid 1 is essentially a fancy clone) more recently than when the glitch occurred, you have lost any chance of reverting to a state before the glitch happened.

Hotswapping (or use of Raid) only has any real benefit if you need to recover from a drive failure very quickly. Raid 1 being instantaneous, hot swapping a few minutes.

However, even using just about any image restore package, you can recover from glitches pretty quickly even if you have to do a full restore.

Raid 1 is really only needed for users where time is of the essence e.g. in a business environment where seamless intervention is crucial.

Cloning does not really offer much over images other than ability to hot swap maybe saving an hour or two of time.

So for most users, it is no contest. For the average domestic consumer, image backups are more flexible, use less space, and minimise the need to swap drives (only on a rare drive failure).

After a lot of discussion, the more appropriate title of this thread turns out to be 'Drop-in Replacement Boot Disk vs Image'. Well, hindsight is always 20-20

Anyway, according to the Macrium Reflect KnowledgeBase what I suggested in my previous post should work if the the drop-in replacement boot disk is unlocked, and I would have to configure BitLocker manually which is a lot of work (for my particular BitLocker configuration)

If the drop-in replacement boot disk is BitLockered just like the source is, I would need a 1 TB drive capacity just like the source is, or with a 50-50 probability I would need a larger drive capacity to avoid margin type of issues.

Frankly, I don't feel like spending the money just for doing the experiments if I already know what the outcome is (or what the outcome should be).

Thanks to all who responded