My question on this is about current generation clone tools such as AOMEI or Acronis vs
old style removable disk-based tools such as the Norton Ghost 11.5 I have always used.

The disk based software addresses one hd then the other.

What I don't understand is how the Master can can write to the Slave HD while booted up.

I have installed AOMEI and it functioned without error for a couple tests. And ol' Norton Ghost may be slower. But I somehow have more trust in the old program.

First of all Acronis is a company name and not just one software label!

Acronis True Image is hooking the disc driver by installing a thing called "filter driver" I think.
They start duplicating for instance a mounted partition like an OS partition. If the filter driver is to write sectors that have already been backed up, True image will have to back them up again. That will work fine unless you are not too active during the backup process. Former versions of Acronis supported tape backup. When doing a tape backup you can't afford rewinding to overwrite some newly written sectors.

I would not use Ghost anymore. You simply have to use Acronis True Image booting from a CD or an USB stick. That way your backup target is not in use and there is no risk in taking care of rewritten sectors.

I am guessing at a very basic level, SATA standard has commands, so when a developer writes software to implement this, the controller and disk just do as they are told. Some programs work at a very direct level, ignoring such things as windows API "normal" disk routines.

Ok there is mention of Acronis here but not AOMEI.
Acronis is just _everywhere_. I don't understand it's dominance and included
with HD's as opposed to something else. Isn't Acronis, as you say, a brand name for a Linux product?

I guess I am not understanding your question, or concern. Possibly Acronis has a different (aggressive) marketing strategy.. Many things are built on Linux, so if this is true, I don't see it as anything negative.

Do you have any specific concerns?

Nope. I just took to the ease of use of AOMEI after trying Acronis ages ago as well as
some others like Clonezilla and Macrium. No interest in Macrium either: I just need the
clone function, not all the IT features for which it is known.

A lot of it is the program terms that had confused me. Disk One to Disk 2 is all I need and
definitely all I want to look at and not try to parse what they mean regarding partitions
and other, as I said, features that are just confusing. I don't wnt to have a manual out in front of me to do this.

You will never get a tool to do what you specifically want, else there would be 100's of tools out there all doing kind of the same thing. Just use the features you want, forget the rest. Tryout some tools and use what you are comfortable with. If someone suggests something, then be open to it, but don't feel obliged to switch around all the time. I still use older tools for some things when much newer, feature rich tools are available. I use some free tools when many paid, "better" ones exist (such as HxD instead of hex workshop or winhex), paid tools instead of free if I like them... My reasoning or opinion may be all wrong in some cases, but you gotta pick something and stop looking around some time.

in the case of cloning tools, probably any are as good unless other factors involved

For disk to disk cloning, automatic partition resizing, my go tool is Minitool Partition Wizard.

It's great for instance to clone a regular HDD to a smaller SSD, keeping all the data.
It has many other features, but I usually use the clone tool.

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I will certainly look into that one for this thread.

Today I have a few magical problems-- and not in a good way.

I ran the AOMEI overnight.
The program engages a screen saver on its own and I thought I had a power failure.
This is good to know for anyone else using it.

AOMEI said the copy completed successfully. I had to remember to spacebar the
screen back on.

But on the target PC the new AOMEI clone would not boot up for anything. It kept engaging chkdsk over and over. I thought it might be an MBR problem so I got out the repair
cd to run the Bootrec fixboot and bootrec fix MBR. No luck with this. I couldn't setup any of my dvd players to get the repair disk to run. And this was after I checked for the dvd
in the BIOS. I just set that problem aside for the moment (power supply, old MSI board SATA connects etc.)

Just out of curiosity I plugged this Seagate AOMEI clone into my older MSI
board-- just a couple steps older: an 880gm rather than the 760gma E41 where the
clone was made.

On that PC I am writing to you now. A big mystery. Something is in conflict on that
760gm booting the Seagate. Since I cannot get to the Bootrec fixes, I may run the
Low Level Format again for a clean slate. This Seagate needs to be where I put it and
not on the backup system I have-- one of several.

For me these are AOMEI inconsistencies-- like the screen saver "feature" (not a bug.)

Next attempt I am going to revert to Norton simply because it continues to provide
a decent result. I realize there are a couple of variables involved.

I'll check in for any replies.

Progress.

Everything is back on and my DVD drives are not dead.

While running on the MSI 880gm I ran the Bootrec commands which allowed for
bootup on the MSI 760.

In my home network workgroup I saw some things not on the homenet. I ran the installer disk from MSI for the Lan. Earlier I mentioned I put on a scratch copy of Win7 as a belt and suspenders move. That was wrong. But the AOMEI clone program should have successfully written over that and not eaten the drivers. There was a warning in some forum I saw about such occurances. Summing up: I'd still revert to running a clone program from DVD/CD. Running 'live' clones seems a problem. Many years ago Windows techs traced problems to users installing a new Windows over the old without complete erasure of the HD. That may still be a problem and something I totally overlooked.

I think I will be on Norton for a while until I settle on a different alternative. I have
an Acronis ISO from years back and may try that as a test. Also I think I saw Minitool earlier in life but will look again.

With all these disk copy tools there never seems to be any improvements to the code but just how the program looks. Example: AOMEI puts s throbber/whirlygig on the screen before the screen saver kicks in. It never reports how much time to completion as Norton Ghost 11.5 from 10 years ago does.

Last thing: in my Win7, screen saver is turned off. So when AOMEI invoked it, a screen saver did not come on just a blank screen.