Can I Image Operating System to Existing Internal Drive

My PC has two HDD with my O/S obviously on one, (XP SP3 on drive C). I desparately want to back-up (Image ??) this O/S) system as I have no other recourse to disaster recovery. My thoughts are to use some Imaging software, probably Macrium Reflect, to get the contents of drive C including the O/S on to the second HDD (in my case drive E) which has loads of space. The question is whether it is feasable to do this. I'm not sure of the implications of having the Operating System sitting on both disks inside the computor - will that cause problems ??.
Plan B is that I have a spare HDD in a drawer in my desk and that I should purchase an (external or internal caddy ??) for this disk and image to there.
Would much prefer to use the second internal HDD but would welcome some advice. Thanks.

 

XXClone is small, free and can clone an IDE, SATA or SCSI hard disk to either an internal disk or a USB disk. I have used it for years, to make a cloned version that can be booted. In your case, using the internal HDD, you would have to change the BIOS boot sequence to boot from it, or you could switch master/slave (IDE).

Only the professional version will do cumulative backups but this is perfect if an exact clone of the drive is needed. Get it here http://www.xxclone.com/index.htm Click ‘Download’ in the left pane and select the freeware package version. It is intended for single installations that run Windows 95 through to XP, 32-bit only, not 64-bit.

If you decide to use it, I can give you some tips on how to run it.

 

Adding to BW's post...

Why not use both methods, clone to the internal and external drives and store the external off site. This gives additional security of your data if something catastrophic happens to your computer.

 

And to add further, be aware that cloning destroys all existing data on the target drive partition whereas you can perform imaging and store it to a target drive partition without losing the existing data. Stated another way, if you use cloning for a backup method, the target drive partition will be dedicated to that alone.

For that reason, imaging is normally preferred.

Even so, I use Xxclone to clone a drive partition and use it for a test dummy drive. I also do imaging for backups but store them on yet another drive partition.

 

Thanks BurrWalnut. Have just done a bit of investigating on various forums to try to understand the difference between Cloning and Imaging. Have read so many that I am now a bit confused but the main thing that worries me is that one article states that 'cloning destroys all data on the source disk' whereas imaging does not. Is this correct or have I just misunderstood something out of context ?.

 

The post from Surferdude2 came in as I was writing the previous question re Cloning destroying data on source drive. I think that answers my question, does it not ?.

 

Cloning can destroy data on the destination drive, if done correctly the source drive will be unaffected

Imaging will normally create a file on the destination drive that can be used to recreate the original.

In either case if done correctly the source drive will be unaffected.

 

Okay, thanks for that, so which is the 'safer' method ?.

 

Either/or...

I prefer imaging so I can store several images on my backup HD but this does mean I need the ability to restore that image (usually with a boot disk/CD from the software providers).

A cloned drive can simply be plugged in if your main drive fails.

It's your choice.

 

Great, thanks all. I think I will opt for imaging.