Disk cloning means copying data from a hard disk to another one and you can do this by simple copy & paste. But you cannot copy the hidden files and folders and not the in-use files too. That's when you need a cloning software which can also help you in saving a back-up image from your files and folders. The cloning software takes all disk data, convert them into a single .img file and you can copy it to another hard drive. Here we give you the best 10 Open Source Cloning software:
### 1. [Clonezilla][1]: ###
Clonezilla is a Live CD based on Ubuntu and Debian. It clones all your hard drive data and take a backup just like Norton Ghost on Windows but in a more effective way. Clonezilla support many filesystems like ext2, ext3, ext4, btrfs, xfs and others. It also supports BIOS, UEFI, MPR and GPT partitions.
Redo Bakcup is another Live CD tool which clones your drivers easily. It is free and Open Source Live System which has its licence under GPL 3. Its main features include easy GUI boots from CD, no installation, restoration of Linux and Windows systems, access to files with out any log-in, recovery of deleted files and more.
Mondo doesn't work like other software. It doesn’t convert your hard drivers into an .img file. It converts them into an .iso image and with Mondo you can also create a custom Live CD using “mindi” which is a special tool developed by Mondo Rescue to clone your data from the Live CD. It supports most Linux distributions, FreeBSD, and it is licensed under GPL.
This is an open-source software backup, which works under Linux system, by default. It's also available to install from the package manager for most Linux distributions and if you don’t have a Linux system then you can use “SystemRescueCd”. It is a Live CD which includes Partimage by default to do the cloning process that you want. Partimage is very fast in cloning hard drivers.
FSArchiver is a follow-up to Partimage, and it is again a good tool to clone hard disks. It supports cloning Ext4 partitions and NTFS partitions, basic file attributes like owner, permissions, extended attributes like those used by SELinux, basic file system attributes for all Linux file systems and so on.
### 6. [Partclone][6]: ###
Partclone is a free tool which clones and restores partitions. Written in C it first appeared in 2007 and it supports many filesystems like ext2, ext3, ext4, xfs, nfs, reiserfs, reiser4, hfs+, btrfs. It is very simple to use and it's licensed under GPL.
### 7. [doClone][7]: ###
doClone is a free software project which is developed to clone Linux system partitions easily. It's written in C++ and it supports up to 12 different filesystems. It can preform Grub bootloader restoration and can also transform the clone image to another computer via LAN. It also provides support to live cloning which means you will eb able to clone from the system even if it's running.
Macrium Reflect Free Edition is claimed to be one of the fastest disk cloning utilities which supports only Windows file systems. It is a fairly straightforward user interface. This software does disk imaging and disk cloning and also allows you to access images from the file manager. It allows you to create a Linux rescue CD and it is compatible with Windows Vista and 7.
DriveImage XML uses Microsoft VSS for creation of images, quite reliably. With this software you can create "hot" images from a disk, which is still running. XML files store images, which means you can access them from any supporting third-party software. DriveImage XML also allows restoring an image to a machine without any reboot. This software is also compatible with Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Vista, and 7.
