Page 1 of 1

"Copy" or "Image" ?

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2011 2:16 pm
by thenoo
What is the difference between creating "COPY" of a Partition and creating an "Image" of a Partition ?

Re: "Copy" or "Image" ?

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2011 4:53 pm
by Bob Coleman
thenoo wrote:What is the difference between creating "COPY" of a Partition and creating an "Image" of a Partition ?
Usually you will see reference to simply "Copy" rather than "creating Copy".

When a partition is copied to another, the second has the same contents as the first after the operation. The copied to partition is, in fact, a copy of the copied from partition and can be immediately used.

An image is a single file containing the contents of the original partition in a form which can be restored to the original or another partition to cause said partition to have the same content as the original when the image was created. Also the image could be created directly on CDs or DVDs.

Due to compression, an image file is typically much smaller than the partition of which the image is being made.

Every time a Copy is done there must be a partition to copy to. Anything else on that partition will be lost. Multiple images, probably taken at different times or of different partitions can be created on the same destination partition. Again, these are just files on the destination.