HDClone Images
HDClone offers several native and standard image formats to create different types of images in order to best support your specific needs.
A FullImage (physical image), similar to a FullCopy, stores all sectors of the disk or selected partitions and optionally all sectors in between into a file image. It can be created from any supported disk type.
| Note: FullImage is available in all editions. If FullImage is desired in those editions that also support other image types, explicitly select FullImage when creating an image. |
A SmartImage (logical Image) stores, analog to a SmartCopy, only those areas of the media that are occupied with file system data. The creation of a SmartImage will save time and disk space versus the creation of a FullImage. To create a SmartImage, the source disk must be formatted with FAT, NTFS, ext2 or ext3.
| Important: The use of SmartImage is recommended is only recommended with intact disks and file systems. In any other case, create a FullImage or BitImage. If you are not absolutely certain whether your media or file systems are sound, we strongly recommend checking the file system health prior to starting the imaging process. |
A BitImage is also a physical image. It creates an image containing all sectors of a disk whether or not they are marked as occupied by the file system table or partition table, similar to BitCopy. Additionally, BitImages contain data in the same linear order as stored on a media. This results in faster and easier-to-process image files with third party programs, especially when mounting them in Miray Virtual Disk.
BitImages contain the same data as FullImages (including Copy free areas). HDClone uses a special file format for FullImages, which optimally supports the features specific to HDClone (e.g. SafeRescue).
| Note: BitImage creates an exact image of all data areas. Usually, this is only required for data recovery or for forensic images. The SmartImage function will also store all data, but will exclude disk areas that are marked as free or unused. It is therefore much faster and in many cases creates smaller images. |
