Live Disk Cloning Software for Windows, SSD, & RAID
|If you’re looking for live disk cloning software, let me introduce you to BackupChain’s unique way of disk cloning. But first off, let’s make sure we are both talking about the same thing. Disk cloning and disk imaging backup are two different animals; you can do both with BackupChain and in this post we’re look specifically into the disk cloning bits and pieces.
Disk cloning differs fundamentally from disk imaging. Disk cloning is the process of creating a duplicate disk, ready to go when you need it; hence, there is no restore operation involved. The disk is a clone of the original. A disk image is a single file that holds the content of a disk. When you need to restore a disk, you need a new disk to copy the contents of the disk image file back onto. Hence, you need to wait for the restore process to write all that data back to a disk and in the case of really large disks, this could take a while. That’s where disk cloning comes in handy.
Disk cloning in BackupChain is unique. Live disk cloning software creates a clone while the operating system is running. It does so by contacting all VSS aware services to prepare for live backup and then uses a ‘frozen view’, that is guaranteed to be consistent, to create the clone. The clone disk is already attached and is being written to during the process. As soon as the cloning process is finished, the cloned disk can be used to boot from. Unlike other solutions, BackupChain runs in the background in Windows, does not require a boot stick or disk or a reboot, and modifies the clone so that it can live side-by-side with the original disk, sort of like a live backup disk.
Did you know, Windows and all other operating systems do not allow perfect clones to be attached simultaneously? That’s because each disk must have a unique ID. Therefore, if you do the mistake and attach a ‘perfect clone’, one that is bit for bit identical with the original, for example, if you restored a disk image to a new disk on the same computer where the disk image was taken originally, Windows will ‘correct’ the clone and give it a new ID. This irrevocably leads to an unbootable disk because the IDs won’t match internally anymore. So this is where BackupChain does its magic to ensure your clone remains bootable and you can use it side-by-side with the original disk for as long as needed. When your main disk is damaged, you can change the BIOS setting to simply boot from the clone.
RAID live disk cloning is also supported. Instead of cloning a stand-alone disk, BackupChain can clone the entire RAID to another RAID or just a standalone disk, or vice versa.
Do you need to clone your Windows or data disks live without interrupting the system? BackupChain is your ticket and it’s incredibly powerful in doing so. Moreover, it offers a wide range of other backup tools, such as Hyper-V backup, VMware backup, VirtualBox backup, file-level backup, cloud and remote backups, and a lot more.
Check it out today, the 20 day trial version is fully functional.