The term ‘disk cloning’ refers to the process of copying, more precisely duplicating data from a source hard drive to a destination hard drive or onto some other external storage devices as a part of data backup procedure. The necessity of disk cloning arises from the fact that data stored onto a hard disk may be lost forever if, by chance, some damage occurs to the hard disk so that it may permanently crash. Thus when the data get lost, there remains no other way to recover it, and at that situation what the user feels is a sigh of repent concerning the fact that why he or she did not backed it up previously.
Thus, by now, it is quite clear that the one and only way to protect data stored on a hard drive, in case even if the same fails; is to take its backup. Now taking backup of all the entire data on a hard drive is almost impossible for a user. Even though the user tries to take back up of the data, he would definitely face with a number of difficulties. This is because the procedure of data backup is extremely difficult to handle. Likewise software developers from across the world raise the concern of creating such a software that would handle the entire process of data back up so smoothly, that the user merely feels its complexity. As a result, the developers came up with a number of different applications. Even though there exists a number of such cloning software today, the most promising is the PC Disk Clone X software, being originally developed by the PC disk tools software group.
PC Disk Clone X is basically a cloning software which is actually used to make an exact copy of the data which is stored on a hard drive, and to finally transfer the same over a completely separate hard drive. The former drive is usually termed as the source hard drive while the later is termed as the target/destination hard drive. However, when the user wants to clone the data stored on a hard drive, he/she should be quite aware of the fact that the storage capacity of the target/destination drive should be equal to or greater than the size of back up data on the source drive. If storage capacity of the destination drive turns out to be less than that of the amount of data to be backed up, the procedure would not be completed. Moreover, this particular software allows the facility of downsizing and upsizing drives through which the partition or disk layout size can be automatically resized in cases where the storage capacity of source and destination drives does not match.
PC Disk Clone X actually clones data by constructing an image file. The file is just like a container which contains all the data that are needed to be backed up. When the image file is transferred to a new hard drive and unpacked, the original data get restored onto that drive. To add, before the disk image is transferred to the new hard disk, the cloning software automatically deletes data previously stored onto it, if any. Thus it should always be taken care of that if any data happens to be present on the destination hard drive, the same must be temporarily backed up onto some other devices like CDs, DVDs or flash drives prior to transmission of the image file. However when the process of data transfer is completed on the new hard disk, the later will look like exactly a mirror image of the original drive.
While in most cases the backed up data is stored onto a new hard drive, the same can also be stored onto some other devices as well. With the help of PC Disk Clone X, a user can even store the backed up data/image onto a CD, DVD, USB drives and Fire-wire drives. Moreover, apart from just cloning data between two different hard drives, this software also allows the user to clone from one manufacturer’s device to another. This includes, cloning data between a SATA and IDE, USB and IDE, SCSI to PC CARD/ FIREWIRE or any of their combination. A word of caution, on the process of data cloning, if a user happens to accidentally configure the software incorrectly; the same may start functioning in such a way that it would ultimately pose a great loss to the user only and nothing else. This can be made clear if we look at an example. If by chance the user sets the target drive as the source drive and the source drive as the target one, the software will erase the target drive permanently. As a result, the user will lose every bit of his/her data and that too permanently.
Thus, after such a discussion, we can simply conclude that PC Disk Clone X turns out to be just an outstanding software on the context of data cloning and forms a class apart on this regard.
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