Why would you create a back up image and restore rather?

Sorry, but not enough space for a complete question in the title.

After seeing another post with a person switching from an HDD to an SSD and a couple of people suggesting creating a back up image and restoring from that rather than just cloning the HDD, why question is, Why would you want to do that?. What potential problems would there be with cloning?

I'm just curious, because I have cloned HDDs to SSDs in both desktops and laptops many times-generally using Samsung software-without any problems. What have I been missing?

TIA

Cloning is a "hit or miss". Works fine for many and does not for others. Clone has worked for me and clone did not work and that time I had to use the disc image and restore from that.

Clone copies everything including bad data and sectors from the drive. Making a full drive disc image (backup) does not copy the bad data or sectors so the new drive will not have the "garbage" bad data.

The main reason is you can compress images so you can store several as a backup over time

These are links that reflect on the comments in the earlier posts:

cloning versus imaging advantages / disadvantages including disk signature collision


Disk Imaging vs Disk Cloning: Key Differences - StorageCraft
What Is a Disk Signature Why Are They Necessary?

I haven't cloned anything in a long time and agree with the above posters on the other issues, but if remember correctly, the source physical size will be imposed on the target drive ie: cloning a 250gb drive to a 500gb drive results in the target drive being only 250gb wasting the remaining 250gb. That can be fixed but you have to go thru additional steps to correctly utilized the additional storage. Whereas, during the restore of 250gb image, can be change to utilize any portion of the target disk.

Easier and cleaner conversion.

Cloning hard drive to SSD will replicate all the contents from the source to the destination. However, you may still need a backup for following reasons:
1. The cloning process will overwrite the destination SSD. You should backup the destination SSD in advance to prevent data loss unless it is a brand new SSD.
2. Backing up the source drive can double ensure your data security. If the cloning process failed, you can transfer data by restoring from the backup.