Booting from alternate drive before backup

[astrodog]

I maintain a few SD! backups.... generally I just smart update the internal drive to a backup volume.
Is there any benefit to booting from a different drive, before then cloning my main drive to its respective backup - so no changes occur to the drive being cloned during the cloning??

[dnanian]

The benefit is that you'll get a more accurate copy, since the source won't be changing.

[astrodog]

Do you think this equates to real world advantages to the reliability of the clone??

[dnanian]

Not in most user cases, no. But if you want to make sure that everything is in a fixed, known state, it's the way to go.