One of the key responsibilities of a system administrator is to ensure the safety of an organization’s computer data. This is a critical task for any organization, given that the loss of important data could have profound implications on its future prosperity.
There are a number of different strategies that a system administrator will need to use to ensure that data is preserved. For example, the person will need to maintain the computer system and/or network, by applying operating system updates and patches, by performing regular backups, and ensuring that the system is kept secure at all times. Disk cloning is a highly popular method of performing comprehensive backups of the operating system, installed software, and an organization’s data with the minimum of effort.
Disk cloning software is not simply helpful for system backups. It has a wide range of other uses such as provisioning new computers in the workplace, restoring computers from a master image, and system recovery.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 13 high quality Linux disk cloning software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who needs to perform system admin tasks.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.
Let’s explore the 13 disk cloning software at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| Disk Cloning Software | |
|---|---|
| GParted | Industrial-strength package for partition editing |
| Clonezilla | Perform system deployment, bare metal backup and recovery |
| Rescuezilla | Easy Backup, Recovery & Bare Metal Restore |
| FOG | A cloning / imaging solution / rescue suite |
| G4L | ncurses-based hard disk and partition imaging and cloning tool |
| Mondo Rescue | Reliable, disaster recovery solution |
| FSArchiver | Save the contents of a filesystem to a compressed archive file |
| PING | Partimage Is Not Ghost |
| Partclone | Save and restore used blocks on a partition |
| Redo Rescue | Simple backup and recovery solution |
| Foxclone | Image backup, restore and clone tool |
| Partimage | Stores partitions to a image file |
| dcfldd | Enhanced version of dd |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |