This doesn’t affect how files appear as you use a drive it only affects their physical location on the media.Īn image is typically written to a file rather than another drive, so it’s often called an image file.
Unlike a clone, an image does not copy free space and makes no attempt to preserve physical layout. Like a clone, an image copies all of the overhead and data stored on a drive. ImageĪn image is a copy of all the information on a drive. A file containing a clone is proportional in size to the original hard disk size (ignoring any compression used when the file is created). That file can then be used to restore the disk to its original state, data, overhead, and free space included. It’s also possible to clone a disk to a file. It might be for forensic recovery - perhaps information in the free space needs to be recovered - or simply a more complete ready-to-go backup. The most common application of cloning is to duplicate one drive to another identical drive.
This preserves the exact layout and organization of everything.
Not only is all the overhead and data copied, but the free space is also copied. Over time, portions (or “ fragments”) of files are spread out over the entire hard disk, with free space in between.Ī clone is an exact duplicate of the original. When you delete a file, the area it occupied is marked as available (or free, or empty). As you create and use it, data gets spread out over the disk.
Content falls into three broad categories: To understand this, we need to review what’s on your computer’s disk. CloneĪ clone is an identical copy of a disk. When it comes to routine backups, an image is generally what you want. An image contains only what we care about: the overhead information used by the operating system and all of our data. A clone contains every bit of information on a disk, including whatever’s in the unused areas, and preserves the physical layout.
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