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Jun 29, 2020  Clonezilla is a disk imaging or cloning program. It helps you to clone GNU/Linux, Intel-based Mac OS, MS windows, and FreeBSD. Features: You can restore one image to multiple local devices. It allows you to restore multiple local devices. This tool supports multicasting. It provides AES-256 encryption to safeguard data access, storage,. Fact Check: Hard disk cloning applications are an invaluable tool for backup and recovery. The global data backup and recovery market are worth over $10 billion. By 2020, the market is expected to increase to $11.59 i.e. An increase of 10.2% annually. The market drivers include increased focus on data quality management and operational excellence.

by Jenefey AaronUpdated on 2020-03-12 / Update for Data Recovery

Disk cloning can be described as the process of creating an uncompressed replica into another drive from your system’s hard drive. It is more commonly referred to as disk imaging in which the hard drive is backed up to a compressed file. This has majorly become important as our system’s hard drive crashes more often than ever. In order to be prepared for such a scenario, disk cloning is very important. A disk cloning software can make this entire process of disk cloning very simple. A disk cloning software can be useful even when you are trying to upgrade or switch out the hard drive of your system. Through disk cloning the system’s data and the installed software are preserved which eliminates the need to re-install several programs. Here are some of the best free cloning software for Windows or Mac systems which can prove useful to you in many ways.

Top 10 Recommended Cloning Software on Window/Mac

Here are some of the best free cloning software for Windows or Mac systems which can prove useful to you in many ways.

Top 1: Tenorshare Free Data Backup

Tenorshare Data Backup is the best free cloning software 2018 for Windows and is highly professional software which makes the process of backing up all the files and programs on your system pretty simple. By making use of this tool, your system’s photos, videos, audio files and other documents and programs can be restored easily in case you hard drive crashes. Here is how you can use this hard drive cloning software free for disk cloning.

Step 1: From the main interface of this software, click on “Disk to Disk”.

Step 2: Here, you would have to choose your source drive and the target drive.

Step 3: The progress of the disk cloning process will be displayed on the screen.

Once done, your system’s drive would be cloned.

Top 2: Paragon Drive Copy Professional

Paragon Drive Copy Professional is one of the best cloning software 2017 and is a feature packed software which is perfect for advanced system users at home. It has the all in one hard disk manager which functions pretty efficiently. Other features of this disk cloning software includes recovery, backup, wiping and partition management.

Pros:

  • User friendly interface.
  • Easy to use.

Cons:

  • Lacks a few advanced features.
  • Customer service needs improvement.
  • Takes a lot of time to complete many operations.

Top 3. Acronis Disk Director 12

Acronis Disk Director 12 is one of the best free image clone software which is great for disk management of your system. This free disk clone software windows 10 is developed for the Windows PCs and laptops and makes the processes and operations run on the device smoothly. It comes with a free trial version which can be tried out prior to purchasing this product.

Pros:

  • Very powerful and easy to use.
  • Has every feature which is required by you to adjust your partitions and drives in a simple way.

Cons:

  • The demo version has a limit of 100 MB.
  • Very expensive in comparison to the products from its competitors.
  • Does not support BTRFS or ext4.

Top 4: Macrium Reflect Free v7

Macrium Reflect Free v7 is a PC backup solution which has been developed by Paramount Software. This ssd clone software is loaded with several advanced features which are perfect for every high level tech PC users. The backup and restore feature’s performance is great in this disc cloning software free.

Pros:

  • Processing speed is very high.
  • Very powerful software.

Cons:

  • Compression rate is average.
  • Significant learning curves is posed by the interface.

Top 5: EaseUS Todo Backup Free

EaseUS Todo Backup is pretty easy to use. The best part about this hard drive cloning software is that it is available for free of cost. You can backup music, photos, system, documents and so much more on your PC with the help of this free disk cloning software. It integrates very well with Windows laptops and PCs.

Pros:

  • File and image backup is great.
  • Erasing and cloning drives and partition is easy.

Cons:

  • Not very fast like the older versions.
  • Does not have the advanced features of a drive management tool.

Top 6: Clonezilla

Clonezilla is an excellent disk/ssd cloning software which helps the users in processes like backup, recovery and system deployment. There are overall three types of this program from which you can choose from based on whether you need it for a single machine restore or backup or for massive deployment.

Pros:

  • It is free of cost.
  • Works across multiple platforms.

Cons:

  • Does not have many features when compared to its competitors.
  • The cloning process is very slow.

Top 7: MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard is a partition manager software which can be used on Windows 10/8/7/XP and also on Server 2003/2008/2012. This is perfect for the home and office users. This free hard drive cloning software comprises of several useful features such as move partition, resize partition, merge partition, create partition, copy partition, delete partition, split partition, convert file system and format partition.

Pros:

  • Comes with a lot of features which are great in performance.
  • Quick and efficient.

Cons:

  • User interface is very cluttered.
  • Not suitable for novice users.

Top 8: DriveImage XML

DriveImage XML is an easy to use disk cloning software windows 10 which makes the process of backup and restore very simple. This program has been specifically developed for the Windows XP and Vista users. This is a pretty reliable sandisk cloning software which performs efficiently while imaging and backing up logical drives and partitions.

Pros:

  • Very easy to use and makes several processes easy.
  • Has provisions for incorporating into the WinPE environments through plug-ins.
Cloning

Cons:

  • Backup process is very slow.
  • The tasks have to be scheduled manually with Windows Task Manager.
  • No default compression.

Top 9: Runtime's Shadow Copy

This free ssd cloning software-Runtime's Shadow Copy helps you in making a bootable backup of your present system’s hard drive to another disk drive. Using this software is very simple to achieve the disaster recovery. If you want to access just a few files, you can get them from the created backup. The update of backup using this free drive cloning software is very fast and efficient.

Pros:

  • Individual file on hard drive can be backed up.
  • The process of backup os very fast.

Cons:

  • If you wish to backup or clone and entire drive, there are better options than this software.
  • Limited in functionality.

Top 10: AOMEI Backupper

This disk cloning software can be used for backing up, syncing, cloning and for restoring a disk in the Windows PCs and laptops. The company AOMEI Technology has developed this AOMEI Backupper and it specializes in offering solutions relating to backup, cloud storage and hard disk partition. In case of emergencies like system crash, you can use this software to quickly recover and restore all your files.

Pros:

  • Has very excellent disk management features.
  • Customer support is great.

Cons:

  • The system slow down when the backup process is in progress.
  • The full version is pretty expensive.

Conclusion

Although all the above disk cloning software are very good in performance, Tenorshare Data Backup tops the list as the best disk clone software. Not only is it packed with all the necessary features, it offers a simple and quick solution for disk cloning and hence is highly recommended.

Disk cloning software is an important need when it comes to data disaster prevention. Disk cloning is a method to create one on one copy of all your hard drive content, including files required to boot to the OS from the drive. In simple words, you can say, it is a duplicate copy of your hard drive.

You can’t prevent hard drive failure or other mechanical failure but sure can avoid losing your precious data by creating a clone of your disk. Well, it also comes handy when you want to upgrade your HDD to an SSD, as it becomes easier to get your data on the new drive.

There are a lot of disk cloning software & disk imaging software available to fulfill the task, but choosing the best for you could be troublesome. To help you with that, we have listed some of the best disk cloning software available for Windows 10, 8 and 7.

Our Top 3 Choices

EaseUS Todo Backup

  • Comes with Incremental, Differential and Full backup
  • Store backup anywhere you like
  • Allows you for migration and cloning

Best choice

Paragon Drive Copy

  • Seamless data migration from one PC to another
  • Create backups, and manage partitions with ease
  • Comes with one-click cloning

Best choice

Acronis True Image

  • Access Data backup anywhere via the cloud.
  • Supports various file systems
  • Available for free

Best choice

Best Disk Cloning And Disk Imaging Software For Windows PC

1. EaseUS Todo Backup Home: Reliable Hard Drive Cloning Tool

EaseUS Todo Backup is a disk cloning tool which is known to be trustworthy when it comes to creating a backup and restoring data on a Windows PC. It comes with three backup options, such as full, differential, and incremental backup.

Features Of EaseUS Todo Backup:

  • Enables you to run an automated backup on your files and directories, compress file images to save disk space.
  • Allows you to create a bootable backup so that you can restore your system whenever it crashes.
  • Store backups to a hard drive, tape, an external device, CD/DVD, FTP server, NAS, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive.
  • Comes with Smart Backup feature, which allows you to perform backup every half an hour, if any changes are made to data.
Pros:
Cloud backup available
Cons:
Low speed while image creation

2. Paragon Drive Copy: One Stop Solution for Disk Cloning

Another great hard drive cloning software, Paragon Drive Copy, can seamlessly migrate your data from a given source to the target. This disk imaging tool allows you to clone your operating system to a USB drive and use anywhere you like.

Features Of Paragon Drive Copy Professional:

  • Easily migrates your OS to a new PC for a seamless transition.
  • Allows you to create backups, migrate data, and manage partitions.
  • Let’s you copy or retrieve data to a hard drive even with different sector size.
  • Can split or merge partitions and distribute free hard disk space again.
Pros:
Intuitive interface
Cons:
No incremental backup

3. Acronis True Image: Best Mirroring Software For Windows 10

Looking for the best disk cloning software which can provide safety, privacy and security of your data? Well, your search ends here! Acronis True Image is a robust tool which can handle mirroring and disk cloning with ease.

Features Of Acronis True Image:

  • Provides access to your data and backup files anywhere via cloud backup. You can manage your data remotely.
  • Comes with a backup solution with AI to protect your computer from ransomware and crypto-jacking in real-time.
  • Provides dual protection as it backups your data both on cloud and locally so that you can access your data offsite as well.
  • Allows you to store your data, locally on an external hard drive, NAS device, network folder, offsite in the cloud and more.
Pros:
Non-stop backups
Cons:
Expensive

4. CloneZilla: Best Free Disk Imaging Software

Clonezilla is a disk imaging tool that works as a disk cloning tool as well. It claims to help in system deployment, system backup and recovery. Clonezilla comes in three different versions, Clonezilla live (single computer), Clonezilla SE(for servers), Clonezilla lite server (more than 40 computers).

Features Of Clonezilla:

  • Supports many file systems, including ext2, ext4, ext3, reiserf4, reiserfs, jfs, xfs, nilfs2, FAT12, FAT16, NTFS, FAT32 and more.
  • The tool works for Windows, macOS, Linux and more and is available for free and open-source.
  • It saves and retrieves the used portion of the hard disk, thereby increasing clone efficiency.
  • Allows you to save the image file on ssh server, local disk, samba server, WedDAV server, and NFS server.
Pros:
Open-source software
Cons:
No online cloning/ imaging available

5. Macrium Reflect: Free Cloning Software For Windows 10

Macrium Reflect free disk imaging and cloning tool is great for both personal and professional use. The tool provides you with options for incremental backups to ensure your data is protected. This version of the tool is available for free and enables you to create effective backups.

Features Of Macrium Reflect Free:

  • Can perform disk cloning, create, and backup disk images.
  • Boots your backups in a Hyper-V VM at once
  • Provides 30 days of technical support via email.
  • Allows you to create images of running Windows and browse backup files in Explorer.
Pros:
Provides scheduling feature
Cons:
No incremental backup

6. MiniTool Partition Wizard: Best Free Partition Manager

MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free disk imaging tool which comes with other features, such as data backup, data recovery, disk partitioning, Disk Benchmark and more. It allows you to check file systems, migrate your OS to SSD, and convert MBR to GPT.

Features Of MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:

  • Let’s you clone or copy your hard disk in a manner that if your target drive is larger than the source, then it automatically resizes Windows partition.
  • Comes with three backup schemes, incremental, full and differential.
  • Allows you to restore the system to the previous state.
  • Clone your original disk to any other drive such as SSD on the same computer.
Pros:
Only available on Windows
Cons:
Not available for mobile, Mac

7. Active @ Disk Image: Best Disk Duplicator Software

Active Disk Image is a disk imaging tool which can make an exact copy of your hard drive, be it SSD, HDD, USB, CD, Blu-ray, and more. You can use disk images for backups, disk duplication, and PC upgrades.

Features Of Active@ Disk Image:

  • Allows you to schedule backup.
  • Enables you to create or restore a disk image backup.
  • Provides Windows servers support.
  • Comes with image compression (fast, high and normal)
Pros:
Includes task scheduler
Cons:
Not fit for novice users

8. AOMEI Backupper Standard: Free & Smart Cloning Software For All

Another great way to clone a hard disk is downloading AOMEI Backupper Standard. It is a free tool which makes sure your data is safe. The disk cloning tool also comes with a disaster recovery solution for laptops and computers.

Features OF AOMEI Backupper Standard:

  • Provides three different backups, differential, full and incremental, to make creating backup easy.
  • Comes with real-time file and folder sync from source to destination without any hassle.
  • Allows you to scan HDD to HDD, HDD to SSD, and SSD to SSD for data migration and disk upgrades.
  • Supports both 32, & 64-bit Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10.
Pros:
A simple interface makes it easy for anyone to use the tool
Cons:
Not available for other platforms

9. Acronis Disk Director: A MultiPurpose Tool To Prevent Data Disasters

Acronis Disk Director is one of the best disk cloning software which can help you clone your hard disk, protect & manage your data, and hard disk. This cloning software can swiftly create partitions, resize, merge, move them without the fear of data loss.

Features Of Acronis Disk Director:

  • Allows you to map hard disks, create partitions in no time.
  • Comes with a disk editing feature, under which you can make changes to your disk drive content to recover deleted/missing information.
  • Can replace an old hard disk to a new one, without reinstalling OS, apps and other settings.
  • Supports Windows Server 2016, latest operating systems and 4K hard drives
Pros:
Works smoothly on PCs
Cons:
Not pocket friendly

10. O & O DiskImage 15: Advanced Disk Cloner

O&O Diskimage 15 is one of the great tools to choose to clone your hard disk as it can back up all your files into a single file anywhere you want, even when you are working on your computer. If you lose your data, then this disk cloning tool can help you recover your data seamlessly.

Features Of O&O DiskImage 15:

  • Comes with support for SSD hard drives and the latest UEFI system.
  • Allows you to create a system restore, clone or duplicate your hard drive.
  • Provides a facility to restore a backup onto a computer with different hardware from the source.
  • Comes with both automatic and manual backup options
Pros:
A simple interface so that novice and advanced users can use the tool
Cons:
Image of used sectors feature missing from the free version
Free version doesn’t have support for Windows 2008, 2008 R2, Server 2016, Server 2012, and more.

11. NovaBackup PC: All-Rounder Backup Tool

NovaBackup PC is robust disk imaging software which ensures protection for your data. The tool promises multiple File and Image Backup options such as Differential, Full, and Incremental. With Boot Disk, it allows you to restore Image Backup, at the time of system failure to get back to the previous state when Image Backup was created.

Features Of NovaBackup

  • Comes with two backup options, file and image backup. File backup enables you to backup specific files, but image backup is to backup complete hard disk.
  • Allows you to restore a single file, which was included in the backup file.
  • Provides an option to schedule backup so that you don’t have to be bothered for the same.
  • Supports NTFS format drives connected to the hard drive and comes with AES 256-bit, AES 192-bit, and AES 128-bit encryption.
Pros:
Decent speed and software is safe and stable to use
Doesn’t require all full attention, the smart tool can handle it all.
Cons:
Image-based DR could be worked on

12. Drive Image XML: A Free Private Edition For Disk Cloning

Another disk cloning tool, Drive Image XML which is available for free, allows you to create an image and backup of your PC’s partitions and drives. This cloning tool can help you create or restore images to both similar and different drives.

Features Of DriveImage XML

  • Allows you toschedule backups so that your data is always secure.
  • A simple and trustworthy tool to create images and backup of your hard disk.
  • The tool uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Services to create safe “hot images” even while working on your computer.
  • Provides you with an option to copy drive to drive directly.
Pros:
Simple, easy to use and reliable
Cons:
Doesn’t come with recovery media option

13. Hard Disk Manager 16: Best Tool To Maintain Disk Health

Hard Disk Manager 16 is another disk mirroring software that comes with an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy to use for all. You can maintain your hard disk, keep control on storage space and performance of your computer.

Features Of Hard Disk Manager 16:

  • Allows you to transfer data from one computer to another in a few seconds.
  • This tool to clone your hard disk is free and comes in protected mode, which means you can preview the changes and apply them if you want.
  • Use the basic partitioning feature to maintain your system’s health.
  • Provides an option to restore your data in the event of any malware infection.
Pros:
Provides an option of continuous backup
Cons:
Can be used by only one person

14. Daemon Tools Pro 8: A Powerful Disk Imaging Software

Looking for a disk mounting tool which can mount all forms of images from explorer or app? If yes, then the answer is Daemon Tools Pro. This drive cloning software is a powerful emulation tool that can get images from physical discs using advanced parameters.

Features Of Daemon Tools Pro 8:

  • Comes with TrueCrypt containers to keep confidential information. Allows you to create dynamic and fixed virtual hard disks.
  • Compress, convert, and protect your files by using a password.
  • Has an ability to emulate all 32 DT, HD and SCSI with 4IDE devices.
  • Comes with Advanced imaging tools to create new and edit old Audio CD and data images.

Best Disk Cloning Software Mac

Pros:
Simple and attractive
Cons:
Updates are heavy

15. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite: An Enterprise Solution For Hard Disk Cloning

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is a great tool to create images, deploy desktops, tablets, laptops, and servers. It is easy to migrate the latest OS, deploy software across hardware as well as OS and do custom configurations.

Features Of Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:

Free Cloning Software Windows 10

  • With a simple interface, the tool is fast, easy to use and reliable.
  • Saves settings configuration in the image, saving hours of manual configuration.
  • Allows you to build an image library which can be used for servers, and workstation.
  • Can clone a hard disk along with image deployment.
Pros:
Configuration settings are saved in the image.
Cons:
Needs manual configuration after the image is completed.

Best Disc Cloning Software

So, these are some of the best disk cloning software to create a disk image or a clone so that you never lose your data ever. What do you think of this post? Please let us know what you think about it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is The Difference Between Disk Imaging & Disk Cloning?

Disk Imaging and Disk Cloning are two different terms, however, are often used interchangeably as they are used for the same thing, i.e. Copy hard drive’s content. Disk Cloning is a process of creating one to one copy of the hard drive, including information that helps to boot the operating system. However, disk imaging creates a hard drive’s archive that can be then used to create a one-to-one copy.

What Is The Best Free Cloning Software For Windows 10?

If you are looking for the best free cloning software for Windows 10, then you can use Clonezilla, a disk cloning program which can be used for system deployment, and recovery. Another disk cloning software that comes for free is AOMEI Backupper, which can easily backup, sync, restore, clone your Windows system.

Is It Better To Clone Or Image A Hard Drive?

It is better to clone a drive as it will create a one-to-one copy of your hard drive, including files that are needed to boot to the OS from the drive. Disk imaging creates copies of everything present on the drive into a compressed file (large file).

Does Cloning A Drive Make It Bootable?

You need to get a disk cloning tool to clone the hard drive so you can backup and upgrade your disk. If you use the software to clone a live hard disk, the target disk is bootable. You can install any of the mentioned freemium software from the list to try and make a bootable disk.

How Do I Clone A Disk For Free?

You can use any of the freemium products mentioned in the list. Our personal favorite is CloneZilla, you can install the tool and clone your hard drive with ease.

Best Hard Drive Cloning Software

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