Make very fast 1:1 copies for HDD, partitions, Pen-Drives or Memory Cards with WinHex

I start saying that I been using this method for a long time and really its fast. A lot of Image backup applications like Ghost or True Image use local file access and MBR recovery. That's a long time consuming task specially with a lot of small files, sure you are aware of file access time.  But there is a not file acess time dependency posibility, that's makes that your copies takes the same time to commit.

Instead following this way you make a secuential copy, that's the faster possible. Sector after sector are copy from the star to the end without pause. Also you could make an image backup from every type of device you select as origin, using the same technique.

The most awesome feature is that you could make a backup of an active and in use partition or harddisk without rebooting your system. WinHex doesn't need an install, is a direct 32bit executable application, so forget installation and required reboots between. But I recommend to make backups only of idle devices/partitions, because you could corrupt some files when you are backing-up your in use system partition. If you try this case, do it only with all others applications closed, thus I've been success every time I maked. But I recommend you to use it with care.

You could download WinHex 14.9 here: (6MB) (100% usefull but with 30days limitation)

http://sharecash.org/download.php?id=104718

(See here, how to bypass sharecash download offer form)

I'm trying to show you an example with a Pendrive, the same for others units: I'm going to make a Image backup of the USB Memory. So these are the steps:

1.  Connect your pendrive or other storage unit and start WinHex, then go to Tools -> Disks Tools -> Clone Disks

2.  Select your origin as disk if you want to backup it, and then your destination could be another disk/partition or an image file, as you need. Choose image as source if you need to restore a
backup.

3. Select sector "0" (red circle) as the beggining of the destination.


Its important to notice that you MUST select "physical unit" if you are copying and entire device, thus includes table of contents and boot sectors. And select logical only if you are backing-up partitions.

Well that it's all that you need to know. In the next entry I will tell you how to recover files within the image without restoring using the same tool.

See Backup manager