What's the best way to create an exact copy of a hard drive....image for image? It's for my moms payroll computer and I'm afraid her hd is failing.
Well the first best way is to have backups. The second best way if you are not technically inclined is Acronis True Image or some other drive imaging software.
Are you just trying to capture the payroll files? Put them all in a specific folder and Save them to a well built external storage. The second piece of advice is get offsite storage for backup. It's cheap or get a TPA for it.
I've used acronis before but I was wondering about using something like this with it. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-2-bay-hdd-docking-station/6153102.p?skuId=6153102
That's a hard drive dock..not a duplicator. You still need software. or... Dual Bay SATA Hard Drive Duplicator - HDD Duplicators - Hard Drive Cloning/Copying | StarTech.com
Right, that's what I was asking. If I could use the acronis copying software with that so I wouldn't have to worry about attaching and detaching drives to the mobo.
Clonezilla for software. Free, and should run off the CD or USB. Need a second hard drive to copy to. But there's a difference between making a copy of all the files, and making a complete hard drive image. If you just want to copy files, get an external hard drive like this, and you can copy the entire C: drive over to it and hope that captured everything. https://www.microcenter.com/product...type-a)-25-portable-external-hard-drive-black If you want to make an image, then you need to buy an internal hard drive, either buy an external enclosure or install the drive in the computer, and run an imaging software. Then you have to remember to run the imaging software regularly. Might be better off imaging and swapping the drives if you are that worried the drive is about to fail. You can also try the built in backup systems in Win or Mac OS.
Go download FTK imager and either mount the drive and pull the files over or use it to image the drive then export The files you want. All for free
Microsoft One Drive and move everything to that. You can get to the stuff from any computer that has internet access.
If the hard drive is beginning to fail, the file system may already be corrupt. Making an image may just copy the corruption.
I took her computer apart, cleaned it and added a new layer of thermal paste to the cooling fan on the processor. Seems better than it was but im either going to build her another one or she's going to buy one. I purchased the cloner that Kenny posted up so ill use that copy the drive. May do a raid setup for redundancy on the next one.
Get something that has RAID capability so a single disk loss isn’t a single point of failure and for Gods sake backups!!!!
There is no need to involve RAID. Specifically, for someone who isn't familiar with it. K.I.S.S. - Easier to drop in 2 SSDs and use the second for a dedicated backup drive. That gives you in box protection. Supplement that with daily offsites for the important accounting package files and you'll be fine. Raid is not a backup, only protects you from a physical drive failure in this case as you'd likely implement a RAID 1 mirror. I don't recommend it for the average user and use it less and less if it's not something like a storage array that I'll be handing out as block storage over the network.
