Copy/Clone of HDD used for Windows Backups

SIW2 said:

What kind of clone did you make? Windows system image moves old blocks into the shadow storage area. You would need to include System volume information in the clone .

If you want to use any of the 3rd party tools, they create separate image files. Aomei, macrium, paragon, Drive Snapshot, Image for Windows, O&O diskimage, Casper, etc all do broadly the same job as each other.

It is a matter of which you find easiest to use - and the features differ somewhat as well. Aomei Backupper is simplest to use, fast and does a great job. I started the forum interest in macrium way back in the Vista days - when it was the only game in town. Now there are plenty of others to choose from. I have moved on, but there are still several macrium fetishists on this forum. You will probably find fans of some of the other products as well.

You are being very insulting calling Macrium Reflect fans fetishists. It is overwhelmingly this forums favourite, and far superior in many ways to the alternatives.

jmx said:

I use a 500 gb external HDD to store Windows backup files and System Images. I do a backup each morning. The 500gb external HDD stays connected to the computer and holds approximately 10 System Images in addition to the file backups


A few days ago, I used Macrium Reflect (MR) to make a clone of my 500 gb backup HDD. I wanted a backup of the backup to keep in a drawer.


Unfortunately, if I try to use the MR clone HDD to restore a System Image using Windows, Windows only lists the last System Image instead of the approximately 10 System Images that I know are on the cloned HDD. (Windows appears to be treating the cloned HDD like a network backup - listing only the last System Image).

I have not used MR to make backups. If I start using MR for backups, will I be able to clone the MR backup HDD and then store it in a drawer. If the answer is yes, will I be able to select System Images off of the clone when I try to use MR to restore a System Image off of the cloned HDD?

Thanks for any info or suggestions.

Why on earth did you try to clone a drive that contains image backups?

The image backups are compressed and all you had to do was to simply copy the backups from one drive to another using file explorer.

emilywang said:

Do you mean you want to make a backup of the backup in the 500GB external HDD? If so, you can try to clone the whole disk to a new hard drive. In this way, all the contents on the hdd will be migrated to another drive.

Waste of time. Existing image files are compressed. Using an imaging tool for this is pointless if indeed it can image/clone external drives (many cannot).

Simply easier to select all files in root of first hdd and copy to new HDD using file explorer.

Why make it complicated?

When using Macrium Reflect Free, There is an option to manually select other images. Just navigate to whatever you like. It does not matter if last one only is seen in restore profile. That only ever shows last one unless you backup images to same backup folder.

Clone the whole disk ( not just a partition). After the clone completes, Detach the source Disk before rebooting into Windows . Then, you should be able to acces the shadow copy storage and get the earlier system images listed.

After that - do not have the source and cloned drive attached at the same time.

Probably best to do the clone from boot media - Aomei should be able to do that, but I haven't tested in this scenario. Clonezilla could be your best bet.
Clonezilla - Downloads
Clonezilla - Browse Files at SourceForge.net

jmx said:

If anyone knows a way to copy a backup HDD and then have Windows System Restore list all of the system images from the copy, I would be interested in knowing what the trick is.