Which Is Better, A Clone Or An Image.

[bob466]

I have a new 500GB SSD which has never been used...so I decided to Clone my main 500GB SSD running Mint Cinnamon 22.1...all went well.

I then turned off my Tower and swapped the main SSD for the Clone...it booted just fine. I then decided to create an image of the Clone with Foxclone...that's when the wheels fell off.

Plugged in my External portable 1TB SSD...created a folder and plugged in my Ventoy Flash Drive and booted to Foxclone. Foxclone saw the Drive..everything was checked but when I clicked OK to start...I got "Failed To Copy Grub" and it would not start...Never had this problem but I have never tried to create an image from a Clone before.

So I tried Redorescue which created the image but I wasn't convinced it would restore it. So I tried Rescuezilla which created an image but at the end I got another different error massage and to make matters worse...I couldn't delete the Rescuezilla folder...had to open the folder as Root and change the permissions to bob to delete it.

To solve the problem...I put back an image of my main Drive created a week ago on the Cloned Drive with Foxclone that I should have done in the first place.

So which is better...a Clone or an Image...both have a place but an image is better because it can be put back on the same Drive or another Drive on a different computer without errors...that's what you want.

 

[Condobloke]

So which is better...a Clone or an Image...both have a place but an image is better because it can be put back on the same Drive or another Drive on a different computer without errors...that's what you want.

Agreed.

 

[Condobloke]

Plugged in my External portable 1TB SSD...created a folder and plugged in my Ventoy Flash Drive and booted to Foxclone. Foxclone saw the Drive..everything was checked but when I clicked OK to start...I got "Failed To Copy Grub" and it would not start...Never had this problem but I have never tried to create an image from a Clone before.

I have experienced the very same thing.
In my case, I chose to install grub. This was tedious, (a pita)but I got it done, eventually.

An image is the way to go. Less stress

All of the above was done with Rescuezilla (I also had a Timeshift snapshot stored separately ,,,,just in case)

 

[KGIII]

I think I'd ask for a nice and clear definition.

What is a clone?

What is an image?

To me, a clone would just be an image of the disk, where the image would be a physical copy of the same disk.

Of the two, I'd expect the physical copy of the disk to work better as there are (ideally) fewer complexities.

 

[The Duck]

I always did this and never a problem although it's been awhile since I really don't use mainstream Linux distros.

How to clone a Linux system

Learn how to clone a Linux system using dd, Partimage, or Clonezilla for effective backups. Detailed step-by-step guide for system imaging.

linuxconfig.org

 

[bob466]

I think I'd ask for a nice and clear definition.

What is a clone?

What is an image?

To me, a clone would just be an image of the disk, where the image would be a physical copy of the same disk.

Of the two, I'd expect the physical copy of the disk to work better as there are (ideally) fewer complexities.

Maybe look here...
https://www.linux.org/threads/solve...s-snapshot-terminology-and-application.57558/

I stopped Cloning Drives years ago because creating an image was a better option in many ways because it's trouble free.

 

[osprey]

I think I'd ask for a nice and clear definition.

What is a clone?

What is an image?

To me, a clone would just be an image of the disk, where the image would be a physical copy of the same disk.

Of the two, I'd expect the physical copy of the disk to work better as there are (ideally) fewer complexities.

The following is an interpretation that makes sense to me.

A byte-by-byte copy such as the command: dd, creates, is an image. The term "image" is analogous to what one sees looking in a mirror, an exact copy of the face looking into the mirror, like a "mirror image". An image file thus includes the entire contents and structure of the original element be it a whole disk, a partition, a kernel such as vmlinuz, or an initrd or initramfs, or an installation .iso file or a root filesystem. There are numerous images creatable.

The term "clone" appears to me to be just another term for "image". The clonezilla program creates images which it refers to as clones, but they are specifically byte-by-byte copies.

The term "copy" on the other hand seems to be a more general term which embraces the production of something which replicates the original item be it a file, a directory or its contents etc., often without the overt sense of anything referencing "byte-by-byte". However, it nevertheless actually creates byte-by-byte replicas. Where "copy" often refers to ordinary files, directories, links etc., it is usually "speaking" at a higher level than that of bytes, bytes being the level relevant when one is referring to images. However, because the copy command itself, "cp", can be used specifically to create byte-by-byte copies of images, it may be confusing at times. In debian docs for example, there is the suggestion for writing the installation .iso image file to a usb with the cp command:

cp debian.iso "$TARGET_DEVICE"

See here: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/CreateUSBMedia. With this command one is copying with the sense of the lower level of byte-by-byte, which is a sense usually obscured or absent when using the command to copy ordinary files and directories despite the fact that cp actually does copy byte-for-byte.

The most significant images in a working linux system are the kernel image and then the initrd.img. Sometimes the initrd image is absent because the contents it may have contained have been included in the kernel image itself, but if the initrd image exists, the kernel uses it in the boot.

YMMV.

 

[Trynna3]

I don't remember creating an image, but I made a few clones and it was fine, with Rescuezilla.

 

[KGIII]

The only backups I make (generally speaking) are just copies of ~/. I do not care about the rest of the data.