{"id":2490,"date":"2017-08-04T02:53:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T02:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eassos.com\/blog\/?p=2490"},"modified":"2022-03-28T08:57:39","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T08:57:39","slug":"how-to-image-a-hard-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eassos.com\/blog\/how-to-image-a-hard-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Image a Hard drive? | Backup HDD into an Image File"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article introduces a step-by-step method to image a hard drive using Free disk imaging software DiskGenius Free Edition. Creating hard drive image is an effective solution to protect, backup files, migrate OS, recover data from damaged disk, etc. If you want to backup a hard drive or USB drive into an image file, continue reading.<\/p>\n

What is a disk image?<\/span><\/h1>\n

A disk image is a compressed file that contains the exact copy of a hard drive, including partitions, all data of operating system, boot information, partition table, installed applications, individual data, etc. The disk image file can be restored on various devices such as the original disk, HDD, SSD and removable disks. Moreover, the image file can be stored on anywhere that you can access.<\/p>\n

Image hard drive VS. clone hard drive, what\u2019s the difference?<\/span><\/h1>\n

Both imaging hard drive and cloning hard drive create an exact copy of hard drive, helping you back up files. Have you ever wondering what\u2019s the difference between them and when we need to image a hard drive instead of cloning hard drive? Now let\u2019s take a closer look at the difference together.<\/p>\n

What are the merits of each approach? Say you want to replace current hard drive with a new SSD, you can clone system hard drive or migrate Windows, after which replace the old disk. Another situation is that you want to create a back for the entire hard drive instead of certain partition, so that you can restore data once the old hard drive is corrupted, or some files get lost.<\/p>\n

The advantage of imaging a hard drive lies in versatility. Since the disk image file is singe file which seems like a compressed file, you can store multiple images on a disk as long as the disk is large enough. Therefore, you can keep backups for several hard drives at the same time, easier and much economical than clone disk. One thing you should note is that disk cloning process will remove and overwrite existing data of the destination disk, and yet disk imaging does not disturb existing data.<\/p>\n

When do you want to image a hard drive?<\/b><\/span><\/h1>\n

As has mentioned above, disk imaging process backs up the complete content, including files, partitions, partition table, master boot records, etc. of original hard drive into a compressed image file. The image file can be restored onto either original disk or other storage devices. Here are a couple of scenarios that you may need to create a disk image.<\/p>\n