How do I clone C: with all Audio Apps Installed?

Howdy,

I have just finished Installing Win 8.1 and all my Audio Applications onto an SSD. I now, before something inevitably goes wrong with Windows 8.1, want to create a clone of my C: Drive and store it onto an External USB3 HD so that if anything goes wrong I can simply plug USB3 External HD into my PC and use the Clone.

How do I do this? Do I have to make the USB3 External HD Bootable? I’m really unsure of how to use the clone once it has been put onto the USB3 drive.

Any help on this would be incredible because I simply cannot afford to waste the time of reinstalling so much software all the time.

Ideally I would just have a second SSD that would just have the cloned information on it and when I want to use it, simply swap the SSDs (and recopy the clone onto the other SSD. Its a big waste of an SSD though so would rather I didn’t have to do this.

Thanks for any help

Jono

Hi,

for my Bootcamp Windows 8.1 partition I use:

Alex

What is Bootcamp? Is this a Mac thing?

Ah yes … a Mac thing. My DirectX Runtime for Games . Just Windows 8.1 native on Mac :smiley:

But the software is a normal Windows Software for image backup/restore.

there are at least a dozen “Backup/recovery” programs out there.
Some have been mentioned in this forum.
you can find comparison reviews of this type of product all over the internet.
We use Acronis.

I remember 1 of our resident PC gurus giving us his opinion in this forum.

Later,
Brain

Thank you. I have actually got Acronis True Image 2015. I made a Back Up. Made a Bootable USB Pen and tested it this morning. Works as it should. I now feel relieved!

Thanks again

Jono

I’ve been making ‘images’ with Acronis for years…I honestly don’t know if images are clones, or if they are two different things :confused: But images seem to work.

I’ve done two methods before, make my image with Acronis, putting it on one of my hard drives within my system, then copy it to an external USB drive for safe keepings and hope when I need it someday, everything went according to plan :confused: I’ve also removed my OS/Programs hard drive, installed another HDD in it’s place, and installed/tested my image right away, verify it, remove it and store that working drive for when I have some major malfunction.

I have a large capacity external USB HDD that I use just to store all my images on. But I’m doing some re-thinking…I may just want to store my images on each machine I have…that is, store my images on an internal HDD instead of external, a spare or one that has extra space on it. Either way I think it’s safer to store it on a drive that’s left disconnected.

Yeah, I actually bought a USB3 External HDD (250gb) just to put my Acronis Image on. It cost £25 which is really expensive when you compare to that of a 1TB drive haha. Nevermind (its worth it). I also needed to make a bootable USB3 Pen with Acronis software on it. On boot up I changed the boot order to USB3 and it found the Pen. Then it asked for a directory of where my Acronis Image was (I plugged in the External drive). It found it, took about 40 mins and my PC was in perfect order. I am happy with this. Let’s put it in perspective. To Install Native Instruments Komplete 10 Ultimate takes about 5 hrs. Let alone Windows and all it’s updates. Sod doing that again. I guess you could make a back up of the back up Image incase External HDD fails?! Paranoia…