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Taking an image or clone of a computer hard drive is a relatively easy process when you use the software and technology available to aid you in the imaging process. When you take an image of a hard drive, the image is an exact replica of your computer at the time the image was taken. Of course, you would want to take the image when the computer is healthy and running without any problems. You should take a new image at least once a month to ensure you have a fresh copy at all times. Should you image or clone a hard drive?
In between images, you should be backing up important data daily or at least weekly whether by an incremental or full backup to an external drive or an online backup solution. Too many things can happen to crash a computer and a hard drive imaging solution is the best way to revive a crashed computer unless you have nothing better to do than spend a day reloading your Operating System and all of the applications that were installed.
While it is true that today’s hard drives are much more reliable than they were 25 years ago, they are still one of the weakest components in your system.
If, for some reason, your hard drive has crashed and you did not have an image or a solid backup of your data, there is still hope. Disk Doctors have all the tools you need to recover from a physical or logical hard drive failure.
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Be Cautious about Windows Updates and Service Packs
There have been numerous times that just a simple Windows Update has made computers so unstable that a re-image of the hard drive was the only solution to the problems. Not to mention Service Packs. You should never try a Service Pack without doing a full image first. Never trust in the System Restore utility built into Windows. There are a barrage of reports of people that have braved new Service Packs and rendered their computer useless. A fresh image of the hard drive could have solved the problems in literally minutes.
Unstable Device Drivers
Other reasons that imaging your computer could save you a lot of hassle are problems with system device drivers. Drivers can be the worst nightmares to troubleshoot. There have been many times that an updated driver has turned computers into boat anchors. Put a fresh image on and the problem is solved once again. I have had times where putting in a new video driver to solve some video problems made the computer reboot endlessly. Luckily, I had taken an image of the hard drive prior to installing the driver. All I had to do was pop in the Acronis recovery CD and follow the wizard to load the image to the hard drive and all problems were solved. Acronis is a lifesaver!
Trying to update the drivers on your computer is a dangerous task to try anyway. You can avoid any confusion about which drivers to install with the UniBlue DriverScanner. The DriverScanner scans your computer’s drivers and checks them against their complete library of the latest drivers, to give you a full list of all those that need to be upgraded. With one click DriverScanner installs each driver update to your computer. Try DriverScanner to see if you need any drivers updated before you try it on your own.
Upgrading a Hard Drive
Perhaps your hard drive is full and you need a bigger drive. There are two options. Reinstall your operating system and all of the applications or simply image or clone the old drive and put the image on the new one. If the reinstall of an operating system is the solution, plan on hours of time and frustration. If imaging or cloning of the smaller drive and moving that image to the larger drive is the solution, plan on about less than an hour possibly minutes depending on how many gigabytes of data are stored on the hard drive. Hard drive imaging or cloning is the only sensible solution. See how easy it is to upgrade a hard drive using the Acronis True Image cloning process.
Miscellaneous Reasons
Maybe you want to try the Windows 10 upgrade but not sure if all of your applications will work. Simply clone or image the drive before you try it. If something goes awry, you can be back to your previous version of Windows in no time. There are many other possibilities where you will be glad that you have an image of your healthy hard drive. If you have ever accidentally clicked on something you shouldn’t have and unknowingly installed a bunch of adware or spyware, it can take hours to completely remove some of those scummy programs. A quick image of a healthy hard drive takes care of the problem in minutes not hours. There is always the possibility of lightning strikes or power surges wiping out your data you have stored on your computer.
Here is a review of Acronis True Image in action. Whichever imaging program you choose, you will be thankful that you have an image of your computer if something goes wrong. A hard drive image is the best way to fix the unfixable or upgrade your hard drive.
Acronis True Image 2017
has been released and it makes it easier than ever to back up your computer and devices. With just 2 clicks of the mouse, you can do a full image backup of a computer. It doesn’t get much easier than that. This version added many new features including the ability to backup an unlimited number of iPhones, iPads, and Android mobile devices with Wi-Fi to your computer, it even backs up your Facebook stuff. It is 3 to 6 times faster than the completion when backing up to an external drive and 25% faster than the previous version when backing up to the Acronis cloud. The 2017 version still has all of the other useful features that are essential in a complete backup program. Clone Disk, Try&Decide, Bootable Rescue Media Builder and Startup Recovery Manager are readily available.
