Hard drive clone means making exact copy of your existing computer hard drive. This will help you to save all computer data as backup and enables you to restore back if something goes wrong with the existing hard drive.
Here I have listed the best free disk clone programs you can choose from.
google.com, pub-1326376214398174, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0Macrium Reflect is another disk imaging and cloning software. It comes as free version and commercial. The commercial versions include standard, Pro and Server. The free version is only for home use. It supports disk imaging and disk cloning.
Compatibility: Windows
Features:-
Drawback:-
Drive Image is freely available hard drive clone / image and backup creation tool. The private edition is only for home users which lucks many features than the commercial version. And support is not provided for free edition.
Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 & 8 (32bit and 64bit)
Supported media: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS
Features:
Drawbacks:
Documentation: DiskImage hard drive clone software provides support only for commercial version not for free edition. However, there is documentation and FAQ on its website that shows how to interact with the application.
XXClone is primarily designed for copying Windows system disk including system files, application and data into another disk. It creates self-bootable disk that can be used in place of old disk without requiring restore process. XXClone is not disk-imaging tool but does the cloning perfectly.
XXClone comes in three versions: XXClone Freeware, XXClone Home and XXClone Pro. XXClone freeware is for everyone but if you want more benefits you need to purchase either the home or professional versions.
Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista and 7 (32 and 64bit capable). Windows servers 2000, 2003 and 2008 are supported in the XXClone Pro version.
Features of XXClone hard drive clone software:
Drawbacks:
Runtime’s Shadow Copy is a mini hard drive clone tool that can copy files and entire drive to another drive. It copies all files including locked and open files using Microsoft Volume Shadow Services (VSS). Shadow Copy is compatible with Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7 and 8. Anyone can download and use it for free.
The features include:-
The software does not provide any support for this freeware.
EaseUS Disk Copy is the other reliable partition and hard drive clone software. It comes in two versions: home Edition and Technician Edition. The home edition is only for private and home computer usage.
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008
Features:-
Drawbacks:
Paragon Backup and Recovery 2012 free edition is among the top five hard drive clone software comes with many features. Paragon’s free edition can create, format and delete a partition. It also supports advanced backup methods such as differential backup. In case of unbootable system, paragon can rebuild new “new recovery” media for the system.
Compatibility:- 2000 Professional SP4, Windows XP Home SP2, Windows XP Professtional SP2 (32 and 64bit), Windows Vista (32 and 64bit), and Windows 7 (32 and 64bit).
Supported files systems: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, Linux Ext2FS, Linux Ext3FS, Linux Ext4FS
Supported storage media: Hard disks (2.2TB+), SSD (Solid State Drive), Network storage media, CDs/DVDs, BD-R and BD-RE
Features:-
Drawbacks:
Documentation: Help and FAQ files are included in the free version of Paragon hard drive clone software. Online support is also available; however no complimentary support is for the free version.
Clonezilla is free and open source software for Disk cloning and Imaging. It comes in two forms: Clonezilla live and Clonezilla Server Edition, the live version is for single machine backup and restore whereas the server edition used to clone multiple computers at the same time.
Compatibility: All windows OS and MAC OS. Both 32bit and 64bit are supported
Supported File Systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2/3/4, reiserfs, reiser4 and many more, for unsupported files systems it provides sector-by-sector copy using dd in Clonezilla.
Features of Clonezilla clone hard disk software:
Drawback:-
Documentation: Clonezilla clone hard disk software provides help to users through FAQ/Q&A, email and forum.
G4U is a NetBSD based hard drive clone tool. It doesn’t incorporate any features other than cloning PC hard disks unlike modern disk imaging programs have. G4U is used to clone hard disk and partition, no other capability.
Compatibility: any operating system is supported Supported file systems: All Microsoft file system
Supported media: IDE, SATA, SCSI, RAID and PCI network cards
Features: To use this hard drive clone software, you should have FTP server and DHCP Server. Since it is DOS mode disk clone program, most people may not go through all the typing and the technical issues.
MiniTool Dirve Copy is the other free hard drive clone software. It clones either disk to disk or partition to partition. It utilizes three methods for cloning hard disk: fit partition to entire disk or copy partition without resize or copy partition with minimum size. After finishing the cloning the boot sequence must be configured so that it can start with the new cloned hard drive. That is all MiniTool Drive copy provides no other capabilities.
Supported file systems include FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, NTFS5
Compatibility: Windows
PC Inspector Clone-maxx is DOS based clone hard disk program. It clones/copies hard drives in high speed mode through utilization of the DMA chipset on the motherboard. It only boots from floppy diskette. The program only copies the entire hard disk not individual partitions.
Odin is a free open source disk imager used to backup hard drive. It runs under 32-bit and 64-bit operating system. After backup you can easily restore back when the need arises. ODIN can run from command line or with GUI.
Compatibility: Windows
Supported files system: all windows file systems
Features:-
Drawbacks:
PING is freely available live Linux ISO used to backup and restore partitions or files locally or to the network. PING can backup and restore the BIOS data as well. It claims that more features are built-in with the tool that outsmarts Ghost.
PING clone hard disk software features include:
Drawbacks:
Acronis True Image WD Edition is trimmed version of Acronis True Image Home 2009 backup. It makes exact clone/copy of your old disk on new WD (Western Digital) hard drive. It only supports WD advanced format drives.
Compatibility: Windows
Features:
Users can refer the user manual and its website for proper usage of the program.