Have you ever encountered an instance where you upgraded your computer only to discover that the deployment software does not support the new hardware? Well, to overcome this difficulty with ease, we have Clonezilla.
Clonezilla disk imaging and cloning tool
Clonezilla is a free and open-source clone system (OCS) solution for disk imaging and cloning designed by Steven Shiau, one of the application’s developers. Clonezilla Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86/amd64 (x86-64) based computers.
The cloning software is very easy to use. It is provided with a wealth of drivers, and the flexible nature of the Linux operating system. The flexible and powerful tool has a simple interface with some efficient inner workings, making it easy to work even on machines with less than 256MB of memory.
The program’s wizard is step-by-step, making it easy for any user to use. Each step is presented as a simple question, along with some advice and a few useful options.
As mentioned above, there are two types of Clonezilla available:
- Clonezilla Live – The edition allows a user to use CD/DVD or USB flash drives to boot and run Clonezilla (Unicast only). It is suitable for single-machine backup and restoration. The data cloned using this edition can be saved as an image file or as a duplicated copy.
- Clonezilla SE (Server Edition) – It is used to clone many computers simultaneously across a network; can clone 40 plus computers at the same time. The edition provides multicast support.
Clonezilla Live has an edge over Clonezilla SE since the former eliminates the need for a DRBL server setup and the need for the computer being cloned to boot from a network.
How to Install Clonezilla Live
Download pre-build Clonezilla Live and feed it to,
- CD/DVD – Download ISO file available for CD. Burn the ISO file to a CD/DVD using a suitable burning program for your Windows and select the ‘Burn image’ option. The CD can then be used to boot the machine you want to image or clone.
- USB flash drive/USB hard drive – Some PCs (Dell INSPIRON mini, Acer Aspire One, Asus Eee) do not have CD/DVD drive. In such a case, it is best to use a USB flash drive/USB hard drive to boot Clonezilla Live.
Once finished, you can boot the bootable Clonezilla Live media into the machine you want to clone.
Clonezilla Live now includes many major improvements and various bug fixes and is capable of working on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows computers.
To know more, you can visit here.
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