Disk cloning software facilitates a disk cloning operation by using software techniques to copy data from a source to a destination drive or to a disk image.
List
Disk Cloning SoftwareDisk cloning capabilities of various software.| Name | Operating system | User Interface | Cloning features | Operation model | License | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | Linux | MacOS | Live OS | CLI | GUI | Sector by sector1 | File based2 | Hot transfer3 | Standalone | Client–server | ||
| Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office45 | Yes | No | Yes | Yes (64 MB) | No | Yes | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, APFS, ext2, ext3, ext4 and ReiserFS6 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Trialware7 |
| AOMEI8 | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Freemium |
| Apple Software Restore | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | HFS+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | Part of macOS |
| Carbon Copy Cloner | No | ? | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | APFS, HFS+ | Yes | Yes | ? | Trialware |
| Clonezilla9 | No | Yes | ? | Yes (210 MB) | Yes | No | Yes | FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, btrfs, f2fs, NILFS2, HFS+, UFS, minix, VMFS3 | No | Yes | Yes (Clonezilla server edition) | GPL |
| dcfldd | No | Yes | No | ? | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | GPL |
| dd (Unix) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes10 | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | GPLv3 |
| Disks (gnome-disk-utility) | No | Yes | Yes | ? | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | ? | Part of Gnome |
| DiskGenius | Yes | No | No | ? | Yes | Yes | Yes | FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4 | Yes | Yes | No | Freemium |
| Disk Utility | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | HFS+ | Yes | Yes | No | Part of macOS |
| EaseUS Partition Master11 | Yes | No | No | Yes (526MB) | No | Yes | Yes | NTFS, ext4, ext3, ext2, FAT32, FAT16, FAT12, ReFS | Yes | Yes | Yes (Enterprise edition) | Trialware |
| FSArchiver | No | Yes | ? | ? | Yes | No | No | FAT32, btrfs, ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS-4, HPFS, JFS, XFS | Yes | Yes | No | GPL |
| Ghost12 | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, HPFS, ext2, ext313 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Trialware |
| GParted Live CD14 | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | ext2, ext3 | No | Yes | No | GPL |
| Image for Windows15 | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3 | Yes | Yes | No | Trialware |
| IsoBuster16 | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, ExFAT, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, MFS, HFS, HFS+, UDF, XFS,17 ReFS18 | No | Yes | No | Trialware |
| Kleo Bare Metal Backup | No | ? | ? | Yes (570 MB) | No | Yes | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, HFS+ | No | No | Yes | Freeware |
| Macrium Reflect | Yes | ? | ? | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | ? | No | No | No | Trialware |
| Mondo Rescue19 | No | ? | No | Yes *20 | Yes | No | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3 | Yes | Yes | ? | GPL |
| ntfsclone2122 | No | Yes | No | No23 | Yes | No | No | NTFS | ? | Yes | No | GPL |
| partimage2425 | Yes | Yes | No | No26 | Yes | No | No | FAT32, ext2, ext3, ReiserFS-3, HPFS, JFS, XFS;UFS (beta), HFS (beta), NTFS (experimental)27 | ? | Yes | Yes | GPL |
| Partition-Saving28 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3 | No | Yes | No | Freeware |
| Redo Backup and Recovery | No | No | No | Yes (225 MB) | No | Yes | Yes | FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4 | No | No | Can access networked drives | GPL |
| Notes | ||||||||||||
See also
Concepts
Lists
Comparison
References
Sector-by-sector transfer involves accessing the disk directly and copying the contents of each sector, thus accurately reproducing the layout of the source disk. /wiki/Disk_sector ↩
File-based transfer (as opposed to sector-by-sector transfer), involves opening all files and copying their contents, one by one. It requires the cloning utility to have a knowledge of the file systems on the source disk. The target disk's layout may not resemble that of the source disk. /wiki/File_system ↩
Hot transfer refers to copying the contents of a volume on which there are open files in use. Implies use of shadow copy or a similar technique. /wiki/Shadow_copy ↩
Zhidkov, D. A., Kuligina, N. O., & Pavlycheva, T. N. (2020). Methods and Problems of Updating the Microsoft Windows 7 Operating System to Microsoft Windows 10 in the Energy Enterprise. European Journal of Natural History, (6), 30-34. ↩
Previously known as Acronis TrueImage. This is the home version. ↩
Bate, Madeleine. "Acronis True Image Review 2021: Is the High Cost Worth It?" Website Planet, WebsitePlanet, 10 May 2021, https://www.websiteplanet.com/cloud-storage/acronis/. https://www.websiteplanet.com/cloud-storage/acronis/ ↩
At the trial version, you can't perform Disk Cloning feature via UI nor Rescue disc. Both methods are locked. ↩
"AOMEI". AOMEItech. Retrieved 22 October 2023. https://www.aomeitech.com/ ↩
Clonezilla home page (includes supported filesystems and other info) http://www.clonezilla.org/ ↩
There is no Live OS dedicated specially to dd. However Live CDs of various flavors of Linux should include dd as a part of coreutils. In general this applies also to Linux-based rescue CDs (although they may not provide dd explicitly as their primary tool, they still may give access to a shell which allows dd invocation). /wiki/GNU_Coreutils ↩
"EaseUS Partition Master home page". https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/ ↩
"Norton Ghost". Symantec. Retrieved 15 December 2012. http://us.norton.com/ghost ↩
"Ghost compatibility with various file systems". Archived from the original on 2017-01-31. Retrieved 2017-01-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20170131194900/https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH107916.html ↩
"GParted Live CD". Retrieved 7 April 2013. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php ↩
TeraByte Image for Windows home page http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm ↩
Clone a drive or partition with IsoBuster, Managed or otherwise http://www.isobuster.com/help/clone_drive_or_partition ↩
IsoBuster 4.3 Release notes http://www.isobuster.com/news/isobuster_4.3_release_notes ↩
IsoBuster 4.8 Release notes http://www.isobuster.com/news/isobuster_4.8_release_notes ↩
"MondoRescue HOWTO". http://www.mondorescue.org/docs/mondorescue-howto.html ↩
There is no ready-to-use Live CD with this utility. It does come bundled with Mindi-Linux which is a small Linux distribution that can be used to create a customized Live CD. ↩
About ntfsclone Archived 2008-02-21 at the Wayback Machine http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsclone ↩
ntfsclone(8) man page Archived 2008-07-06 at the Wayback Machine http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsclone.8.html ↩
There is no Live CD dedicated specially to this utility. However, it is present on several rescue CD's together with other software. ↩
"Partimage home page". Archived from the original on 2017-02-08. Retrieved 2008-05-26. https://web.archive.org/web/20170208121536/http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page ↩
Partimage supported filesystems http://www.partimage.org/Supported-Filesystems ↩
There is no Live CD dedicated specially to this utility. However, it is present on several rescue CD's together with other software. ↩
"Partimage - Supported filesystems". http://www.partimage.org/Supported-Filesystems ↩
Partition-Saving manual http://www.partition-saving.com/en/lisezmoi.html ↩