What Disk Clone Program to Use 2023

[DVDR_Dog]

Just curious. With the advent of SSD and it's various speeds and SATA no longer the bus of choice, what program have you successfully used to clone your "C" drive or what ever drive designation you use for your boot to operating system drive. I did a clone with Acronis from a 512MB SSD to a 2TB drive on the Dell Latitude I am currently posting from (both were NVMe SSD) and it worked OK, took more than a few boots, an optimization, and a trim to finally get it settled in and up to speed. Fortunately all the programs transferred flawlessly. So now that the rules or at least the parameters have changed, have you had any experience with cloning programs recently. I am about to enlarge the 512MB drive that came with my T460s Thinkpad and as soon as I settle on the right brand and model SSD, I plan to clone that drive to a larger SSD.
Not going to turn this into a poll so I don't pigeon hole your answer and exclude a program you may use.
Let 'er rip my fellow members.

 

[ThumperTM]

Just curious. With the advent of SSD and it's various speeds and SATA no longer the bus of choice, what program have you successfully used to clone your "C" drive or what ever drive designation you use for your boot to operating system drive. I did a clone with Acronis from a 512MB SSD to a 2TB drive on the Dell Latitude I am currently posting from (both were NVMe SSD) and it worked OK, took more than a few boots, an optimization, and a trim to finally get it settled in and up to speed. Fortunately all the programs transferred flawlessly. So now that the rules or at least the parameters have changed, have you had any experience with cloning programs recently. I am about to enlarge the 512MB drive that came with my T460s Thinkpad and as soon as I settle on the right brand and model SSD, I plan to clone that drive to a larger SSD.
Not going to turn this into a poll so I don't pigeon hole your answer and exclude a program you may use.
Let 'er rip my fellow members.

HI @DVDR_Dog!

I used Macrium Reflect last year, it was working fine for me

 

[DVDR_Dog]

I guess the biggest problem for me is it has been impossible to do a live direct clone NVMe -> NVMe. I forgot I did have a a USB adaptor for NVMe so I will mess around and see what's possible. Prices for NVMe are being discounted 50% for all but the top performing gaming drives, it's too temping not to make the move. I also see an attempt to pull back on warranty terms. Plain and simple SSDs will never match the longevity of a decent quality spinner, but their speed makes them great for work drives. Samsung once owned the market, now there are many players on the market driving prices way down. I like it!

 

[DVDR_Dog]

I was just going thru some older posts on here. I should have mentioned earlier that EAseUS Partition Master will do this job quite painlessly. I have already used it on another system. I attached a USB enclosure with a BLANK (delete all partitions and DO NOT parition or format). EaseUS will then ask you what you want to do with this "naked" drive. One of the options is to clone the existing OS drive. It does so perfectly on a couple of instances for me already.

 

[AFFASocial]

Maybe this can help you​

Clonezilla - About

What is Clonezilla?​

Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program similar to True Image® or Norton Ghost®. It helps you to do system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery. Three types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live, Clonezilla lite server, and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla lite server or SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk. This increases the clone efficiency. With some high-end hardware in a 42-node cluster, a multicast restoring at rate 8 GB/min was reported.

Features:​

• Many File systems are supported: (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, btrfs, f2fs and nilfs2 of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ and APFS of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, (5) minix of Minix, and (6) VMFS3 and VMFS5 of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Minix, VMWare ESX and Chrome OS/Chromium OS, no matter it's 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored by Partclone. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
• LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
• LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is supported.
• Boot loader, including grub (version 1 and version 2) and syslinux, could be reinstalled.
• Both MBR and GPT partition formats of hard drive are supported. Clonezilla live also can be booted on a BIOS or uEFI machine.
• Unattended mode is supported. Almost all steps can be done via commands and options. You can also use a lot of boot parameters to customize your own imaging and cloning.
• One image restoring to multiple local devices is supported.
• Image could be encrypted. This is done with ecryptfs, a POSIX-compliant enterprise cryptographic stacked filesystem.
• Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massive clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
• Bittorrent (BT) is supported in Clonezilla lite server, which is suitable for massive deployment. The job for BT mode is done by Ezio.
• The image file can be on local disk, ssh server, samba server, NFS server or WebDAV server.
• AES-256 encryption could be used to secures data access, storage and transfer.
• Based on Partclone (default), Partimage (optional), ntfsclone (optional), or dd to image or clone a partition. However, Clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
• By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

Minimum System Requirements for Clonezilla live:​

• X86 or x86-64 processor
• 196 MB of system memory (RAM)
• Boot device, e.g. CD/DVD Drive, USB port, PXE, or hard drive

Limitations:​

• The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.
• Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.
• Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.
• Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you still have workaround to make it, read this.
• Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to create the recovery iso file.

License:​

• Clonezilla itself is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2. However, to run Clonezilla, a lot of free and open source software, e.g. the Linux kernel and a minimal GNU/Linux OS, are required.

Which Clonezilla Shall I Use ?​

• Clonezilla Live: Clonezilla live allows you to use CD/DVD or USB flash drive to boot and run clonezilla (Unicast only)
• Clonezilla lite server: Clonezilla lite server allows you to use Clonezilla live to do massively cloning (unicast, broadcast, multicast, bittorrent are supported)
• Clonezilla SE: Clonezilla SE is included in DRBL, therefore a DRBL server must first be set up in order to use Clonezilla to do massively cloning (unicast, broadcast and multicast are supported)

 

[ThumperTM]

Maybe this can help you​

Clonezilla - About

What is Clonezilla?​

Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program similar to True Image® or Norton Ghost®. It helps you to do system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery. Three types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live, Clonezilla lite server, and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla lite server or SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the hard disk. This increases the clone efficiency. With some high-end hardware in a 42-node cluster, a multicast restoring at rate 8 GB/min was reported.

Features:​

• Many File systems are supported: (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, btrfs, f2fs and nilfs2 of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ and APFS of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, (5) minix of Minix, and (6) VMFS3 and VMFS5 of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Minix, VMWare ESX and Chrome OS/Chromium OS, no matter it's 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored by Partclone. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
• LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
• LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is supported.
• Boot loader, including grub (version 1 and version 2) and syslinux, could be reinstalled.
• Both MBR and GPT partition formats of hard drive are supported. Clonezilla live also can be booted on a BIOS or uEFI machine.
• Unattended mode is supported. Almost all steps can be done via commands and options. You can also use a lot of boot parameters to customize your own imaging and cloning.
• One image restoring to multiple local devices is supported.
• Image could be encrypted. This is done with ecryptfs, a POSIX-compliant enterprise cryptographic stacked filesystem.
• Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massive clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
• Bittorrent (BT) is supported in Clonezilla lite server, which is suitable for massive deployment. The job for BT mode is done by Ezio.
• The image file can be on local disk, ssh server, samba server, NFS server or WebDAV server.
• AES-256 encryption could be used to secures data access, storage and transfer.
• Based on Partclone (default), Partimage (optional), ntfsclone (optional), or dd to image or clone a partition. However, Clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
• By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

Minimum System Requirements for Clonezilla live:​

• X86 or x86-64 processor
• 196 MB of system memory (RAM)
• Boot device, e.g. CD/DVD Drive, USB port, PXE, or hard drive

Limitations:​

• The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.
• Differential/incremental backup is not implemented yet.
• Online imaging/cloning is not implemented yet. The partition to be imaged or cloned has to be unmounted.
• Due to the image format limitation, the image can not be explored or mounted. You can _NOT_ recovery single file from the image. However, you still have workaround to make it, read this.
• Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to create the recovery iso file.

License:​

• Clonezilla itself is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 2. However, to run Clonezilla, a lot of free and open source software, e.g. the Linux kernel and a minimal GNU/Linux OS, are required.

Which Clonezilla Shall I Use ?​

• Clonezilla Live: Clonezilla live allows you to use CD/DVD or USB flash drive to boot and run clonezilla (Unicast only)
• Clonezilla lite server: Clonezilla lite server allows you to use Clonezilla live to do massively cloning (unicast, broadcast, multicast, bittorrent are supported)
• Clonezilla SE: Clonezilla SE is included in DRBL, therefore a DRBL server must first be set up in order to use Clonezilla to do massively cloning (unicast, broadcast and multicast are supported)

Many peeps use clonezilla...

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Many peeps use clonezilla...

I can see why. The last thing you need is a crack to fail when you are trying to recover a dead system. Clonezilla's GUI is not super easy, but the guts of the program seem solid. Being open source it's always going to work well with all the features.