=?utf-8?Q?Does_the_backup_hdd_need_to_be_empty_=3F?=

[Sreyan Chakravarty]

I am going to backup my Windows 8.1 x64 machine to an external hard drive. Now the my hard drive contains other data but has the free space necessary to hold the disk image. So when I am going to use Clonezilla does my backup hdd need to completely empty ? Or will Clonezilla format it once before the system image is stored there ?

Or can it hold both my data and the disk image ??

[Fuchs]

If you have made clonezilla 'savedisk' to an external drive (for the image) then
you can make clonezilla 'restoredisk' without any formatting before.
All data of the new drive will be overwritten if exist.

In this case e.g. you have got all the partitions with the
- hidden boot windows partition (if exist additionally, about 100 MB)
- hidden recovery windows partition (about 5 GB)
- your windows 8.1 partition ( C:\ )
- your data partition ( D:\ )

If you would like alternate the partition sizes then can you use 'gparted live' for the new drive before.
(The new partitions should be equal or greater than the old ones.
Look for 'blkdev.list' in the image.)