Cloning To USB Drive

Yes it's possible. No it will not boot as Microsoft does not allow the OS to boot from USB. You would be better served taking full disk backups and storing them to the external drive and then restoring them to the original drive or another replacement drive if need be. Clone is not designed as a backup plan and is really intended to be used when you know you're going to be swapping drives at that time. Even then, a backup is still recommended... just in case.

Ok.  I will just do full periodic backups then.  

That said, is it also necessary to create a seperate boot USB drive from which once used to boot the computer, the backup I wish to restore from is then selected from that backup USB drive, or can both a boot USB drive and the full backup be made on the same USB drive?  I have a 256 gig drive that I was going to put the clone-now-full disk backup on and the media I am backing up is only roughly 85 gigs.

By default, you need a boot USB flash drive and a seperate USB hard drive for backups.  The rescue media builder only lets you build media to a usb flash drive of the "removable" type in Windows.  It's a precaution to make sure you don't accidentally format a data hard drive with rescue media. 

However, a work-a-round is possible.  Create a usb flash drive and take a parition image of it.  Then, parition your main USB hard drive with a 1GB free parition in the front (you can use Minitool Partition wizard free or AOMEI parition manager free).  You can then restore your USB flash drive parition image to the 1GB free paritition at the front of your USB hard drive and would then end up with one main hard drive that is bootable and has a seperate data parition for yoru backups. 

I have done this with 3 paritions - 1 1GB parition for the default Linux bootable media, 1 1GB parition for the WinPE boot media and the rest for backups and other DATA.

So if I wanted to make the bootable media on a seperate USB drive, the smallest USB drive I can find, say a 4 or 8 gig, would be plenty big enough?  Also, is it necessary to create new bootable media with each backup image created on the seperate USB drive?  And finally, once the bootable USB drive is in place, I assume it lets you select another drive to do the restore from from which you would plug in the backup drive into another USB port and the bootable drive will see the backup drive plugged in adjacent to it?

A 4GB USB Thumb drive is more than large enough for the bootable media.

It is not necessary to create new boot media with each backup.  Once you create boot media it is only necessary that you insure that you can successfully boot that media on your computer.

You assume correctly that once boot media is created you can boot that media, select another USB drive that contains the backup image and then restore that image to another drive.

The Rescue Media can live on a 1 GB flash drive. I don't know if you can buy a 1 GB flash drive these days, but it doesn't need larger than that.

Just checked on eBAy and you can buy 1 gig USB 2 sticks. USB 3 is, I think, out of the question.

Ian

Thank you all very much for the information and confirming my thoughts on how the process works.

Ok, I just did the backup.  What is the file compression ratio?  The backup is about 36.5 gigs and the size of the drive that was backed up to that size is roughly 86 gigs.  Does that sound about right?

Could be (most likely).  Backups are generally 20-30 smaller than the original.  Some of it depends on the content though as most pictures and video files are already compressed so won't be any smaller with compression in those cases.  HOWEVER, because you're doing the backup with Windows running, there are default exclusions as well...Check your exclusions 

Things that exist in Windows that don't need to be in your backup are being excluded and they can be quite large

hiberfile.sys - don't need it in a backup

pagefile.sys - don't need it in a backup

system volume information (you can turn this on if you want to keep your restore points)

recycle bin - you deleted those files - don't need it in a backup

Any directories or files that are temporary (contain ~ or have temp in the name... shouldn't need them in a backup).

I have backed up a number of clean installs of Windows 10 PRO with no other software installed using the bootable media.  A typical Windows 10 Pro install will be around 20GB.  After using the True Image recovery media to backup such a disk the total size of the backup comes in at just over 9GB.

Cool.  I dont do system restore points or hibernate since my main drive is an SSD.  My bin is empty so I'd same I'm good to go.  I didnt modify any settings, so however and whatever the software is configured to back up from an entire system backup is what it did.

Thanks again

Scott

Bootable media doesn't leave out much since it works outside of Windows.  If you have a look at the Exclusions list you will see what is not backed up.

Yes, I would say you are good to go.

I was cloning the HD on an Acer desk top (windows 10) to a 450 GB sandisk plus SSD. The true image 2106 software runs through recognizing Disk 1 as source and 2 as target. It asks for  a reboot. However when the system reboots there is no message from the software that it is cloning. My desktop just comes back as normal. I have used the same software and SSD on my Assus laptop and it cloned that HD with no problem???

Don't start the clone from Windows - use your bootable media to start it.  

Not all bios are the same and this is what's preventing the launch.  I suspect your Acer has secure boot enabled which will prevent the Linux kernel from loading.  Or you may be using RAID as the SATA mode, or just have an incompatible driver due to the hardware difference.

Starting this from Windows, and the bios preventing the change of the bootloader  can render your system unbootable as well so that's why I suggest only starting your clone from the offline rescue media.  If you can boot the rescue media, that's step 1 (if not, time to play with your bios), then see if it detects your hard drives once booted, that's step 2.  When you boot your rescue media, it needs to be done to match your OS install as well (UEFI or legacy) which could be another reason why starting from Windows is failing.