Articles on Image IMAGING vs CLONING

[Paz]

This is more so I dont lose the pages. I along with many others consistently have problems with key validation, and flashing of the HD images. While the team is working hard on resolving this, it seems to be the same issue over and over again.

People are used to "installing" software which means a program puts files on your operating system and the installers these days have checks to make sure everything got to where it should.

Imaging is not the same thing. You take an IMG file and copy the data bit by bit to a destination drive. Based on how this works the utility has no way to know or determine if the source bit and destination bit are identical or correct.

Assumption #1: Because my image loads linux, it should be fine
Assumption #2: Because the key validator at least ran (and failed) the image flashed fine

Apparently the data suggest this is not the case. If a few bits fail in random places, only certain things will not work properly. The team is trying very hard to come up with a new process that takes this uncertainty away. But for the meantime, PIMP DOES WORK and 1000s of users are doing this fine day to do.

Dont be discouraged, have some faith. It's frustrating to do this over and over again without any luck, but that doesnt mean Pimp is broken.

Here are a few links which I found today which might help. This guru knows HDDs inside and out and describes the difference between IMAGING and CLONING and what happens when you unknowingly write to a bad sector. Even brand new drives contain bad sectors, and truth be told, SSDs are even worse for this. SSD technology is known for static errors, so they implemented types of error correction which CANNOT be used in the img flashing process.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=1410

This article discusses a utility that helps you determine there are bad sectors and mark them to not be used.

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1183

I havent been able to test this yet, but will do so this week. If anyone beats me to the punch, please update here.