Supports a wide range of file formats: Clonezilla supports numerous file formats, including NTFS, FAT, ext2, ext3 and ext4.You can even boot Clonezilla from CD/DVD or do a network boot. Ability to run from USB: You can run Clonezilla from a USB, so there’s no need to install the tool on the operating system.

Clonezilla does use a curses-based interface, so some might find it a bit challenging at first. And if you’re looking to clone multiple machines quickly, Clonezilla SE can clone 40 machines at once. There’s an unattended mode and multicast support built-in, as well as the ability to reinstall the Grub bootloader.Ĭlonezilla might be the single most powerful disk copy tool available that doesn’t have a price tag. This particular take on the cloning process is more like a bootable Linux distribution that can do bit-by-bit copying, and it supports a ton of file systems (including FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, UFS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, xfs, jfs, btrfs, f2fs, nilfs2 and even LVM2).

Choosing the right HDD cloning software for your businessĬlonezilla: Best for deployment on multiple systemsĬlonezilla is one of my favorite HDD cloning tools.

In the end, what’s important is that you use the tool that best suits your skills and needs. Some are Windows specific, and others don’t care what operating system you’re running. While some will do a-bit-for-bit copy, others create a full ISO image of your running system.

Some of these hard drive cloning apps are more powerful than others. When you don’t have the budget, what do you do? You use one of the disk imaging utility tools listed here, all of which do an admirable job of cloning a hard disk drive at an unbeatable price, free. Unfortunately, retail hard disk imaging software, like Acronis Backup and Restore, may not be in everyone’s budget. SEE: Use this software usage policy from TechRepublic Premium When this occurs, if you happen to have a backup image or clone of the damaged or corrupt source drive, recovering your data to a new drive will be far easier. You’ll have an old hard drive fail and either you’ll lose valuable data, or the machine will refuse to boot. It’s inevitable: At some point you’re going to need to recover from a disaster.

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