Macrium....Cloning pc with SSD and HDD ????

It's kind of misleading when you continue to mix use of the terms clone and image and backup. It's either a clone (which produces a clone) or a backup (which produces an image). If you get this clear for the help you're requesting, then you won't have to have ten different threads hanging out there abandoned.

provlima said:

thanks for your response but are you referring to a disk image creation? My question referred to making a clone image of the OS SSD and the Data Disk would two clones have to be created from the respective OS SSD and the Data HDD?

I'm really having trouble making sense of what you're after because of the distinction not being made between a CLONE and an IMAGE.

You clone a DISK, typically, the whole disk. You make an exact copy of usually a whole disk (sometimes a partial for special purposes, I guess) and you transfer an exact copy to another (usually) blank disk. The typical purpose of cloning is to make two disks exactly the same. You CAN clone one size of disk to a different size disk but you are really just copying the partitions of the source disk to the target disk. There is NO image produced or involved in cloning.

An image is (usually) a single large file of the type .mrimg (if made with Macrium) made by backing up, i.e., imaging a disk. Typically you select every partition of a disk to be imaged and it produces a single large image file on the disk you store backups on (usually a large external or large separate internal disk).

SO, the essential question: Do you want to clone your two disks or do you want to image them?

You can image both disks into a single large image on that third disk or make it two separate images if you want. These images will not be considered clones, although restoring the images will give you back identically what you imaged.

I guess, if using cloning, you could drag and drop partitions from both disks onto one target disk but it may have to be done in two different cloning sessions, not sure about that. However, it's really hard to understand why you would want to do that. Cloning is usually done for the distinct purpose of being able to physically use the target disk as a direct replacement of the source disk in the event that the source disk fails.

I hope this helps you to help us understand exactly what you're after. Maybe I'm just being dense or bull-headed?

P.S. Note that the destination for a clone (partition by partition) is to space pn a disk that is unallocated, which your F & G drives are NOT. You wouldn't send clones to those drives, only images.

provlima said:

Sorry if I'm not making myself clear.... but I'm trying to make a clone of my pc to an external backup hdd
The source pc has an SSD (OS) and a Data HDD.

is it possible do this using a single target HDD?
Thanks for your help

I think it may be possible - per what I said above, may require multiple sessions. But be clear on this, you have 5 partitions (4 from Disk 1, 1 from Disk 2) to clone across to a single drive. Make sure you have enough UNALLOCATED space on your target disk for these 5 partitions. You only have 277 MB unallocated on Disk3 - if that is your target.

Is the purpose to be able to use Disk 3 as a direct replacement for Disk 1 or Disk 2?
If not, I highly recommend you simply IMAGE both of those disks to Drive G. Then make sure you have a bootable Macrium Rescue USB or CD or DVD in case you have a failure of Disk 1 and can't boot from it.

If you respond: but I have 1.5 TB free on Drive G, plenty of room for clones, I respond: clone targets are unallocated space (which you only show 277 MB of on Disk 3) and image targets are free space on existing formatted partitions such as your Drive G.

Here's a link to a Macrium blog post/article you should find informative: https://blog.macrium.com/techie-tues...e-e6be74abb089

provlima said:

Sorry if I'm not making myself clear.... but I'm trying to make a clone of my pc to an external backup hdd
The source pc has an SSD (OS) and a Data HDD.

If you want contents of both drives to be stored in uncompressed format on a single larger drive, you have to create an image backup first to a different drive to the target drive.

What you cannot do is CLONE two drives to one drive. You can image backup two drives to an intermediate drive, and restore both image backups to a single drive with care.

is it possible do this using a single target HDD?
Thanks for your help

You are making life very complicated as you clearly do not understand difference between a clone and an image backup.

A clone is a faithful copy of a drive on another drive. You can only clone a single drive to another.

An image backup is a copy of one or more drives stored in a compressed file.


It is like copying data from one or more drives to a zip file.

You can later open the image backup amd restore files to an existing drive(s) or new driveds) in much same way you open a zip file and extract files wherever you want.

A clone is primarily used when you want to replace an existing drive with a new one.

An image backup is primarily used as a backup when you want to recover files on an external backup drive to their original drives.

If you restore the backup to a new drive, that in effect is like cloning but in two stages. You would normally only do this if the original drives failed.

I am sure you need image backups not clones.

If you do not grasp the above, then frankly we cannot help you any further, and no amount of posts will help you.

@provlima - I see you have marked this thread as solved. Is all sorted now and you understand what you have there on Disk 3 and how it will save you if either Disk 0 or Disk 1 go bad?

One other item - base on your screenshot above, you should have all 4 partitions on Disk 0 checked when you back it up - you don't show that 1st partition checkmarked to back up (image!) and it is a partition you need to be able to boot. I highly recommend that repeat your full backup ("Image this disk") of Disk 0 with all 4 partitions check marked. (Delete the first back from the Disk 3 OS partition, F: drive, first).

Please confirm if all is good for you now.