WOW… Where to start… Hard drives are the garbage dump of a computer… Sure we strive to keep our data organized but in actuality… We have zero control as to where the computer places our data on disk. Files are written to the first available sector on disk. These sectors are reversed and freed based on which files are in “use” and which have been “deleted”! In actuality no files are truly deleted until they are overwritten. Point of fact… the pointer to the file on disk is the only thing that is deleted when we empty the Trash/Recycle Bin.

A bit-stream copy of a hard disc is a more exact duplicate as to the ones and zeros on a disk. One needs to have an HD of equal or larger size than the one being copied… Some may call this a disadvantage BUT the fact of the matter is that disc is cheap. The fact is that disc size grows while the cost remains fairly constant. No real disadvantage there.

It takes disc of equal size because it includes the file/disc slack. Why is this important? Because disc storage is broken up into blocks. These blocks are finite on disc based on the file system of the OS/disc that is operating upon the disc. If the block size is 8KB and you actual file/data sizes is only 4KB…that leave 4KB of free unallocated space. There are tools that can right data to the slack space. Tricky… tricky they are. You want to be able to capture everything that is on disk… No matter what.

Because Bit-stream copies are capturing every byte of data on disk it takes longer to copy. Standard backups/mirror images are only copying the actual data and then fitting it into it block size allocation on the destination disc. One would miss the slack space… AND the “deleted” files! Bad idea.