Backup--a different approach

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

I haven't read all the posts on this thread, so forgive me if this has been
covered, but I've been extremely pleased with disk cloning through
*hardware*. I have the Aluratek drive duplicator.


https://www.ebay.com/p/?iid=122491856845&&&dispItem=1&chn=ps


Every Saturday morning, I shut down my Lenovo ThinkPad laptop, unscrew the
one simple screw that holds in the hard drive, slide it out, put it in the
Aluratek, then take the older of my two backup bare drives from the cabinet
and pop it in the Aluratek's other slot. (The back slot is source and the
front one is destination.) Then I push its three buttons, in sequence, and
it starts a sector-by-sector copy. Takes about 45 minutes to clone a 250GB
drive. (I'm copying an SSD to a non-SSD.)


The two drives are then identical. The laptop is indifferent to which one I
put back in. You can't get simpler and safer than that. Well, maybe if I
had a second, identical laptop to go with it . . .


NB: the destination drive needn't be from the same manufacturer as the
source drive, but it has to have the same or greater capacity. Even if you
have used only 100 GB of your 500GB drive, your destination drive must also
be at least that big. Second caveat: if you're using a laptop, the
destination drive must be thin enough to fit in. My Lenovo, for instance,
won't take the thicker of the two thicknesses of harddrives that are available.


Bonus: when you are not using the Aluratek to clone a drive, it functions
as a housing for external drives. I use it both ways. The second of the
three buttons I mentioned switches its function from external drive housing
to drive-duplicating.


Removing the drive from my Lenovo is super-easy. Other computers are no
doubt somewhat harder to do this with.