The cloning software job is to take all disk data, convert them into a single .img file and give it to you, so you can copy it to another hard drive, and here we have the best 7 Open Source Cloning software to do the job for you. Cloning a drive is more suited for times when you're upgrading your hard drive — with an external enclosure, it's basically just a one-step process — but it can also be used in a backup situation. If your hard drive crashes, and you have a recently cloned version lying around, you can simply pop it into your PC and act like nothing happened.
Clone Hard drive using Linux
Cloning a Linux hard drive is like cloning a segment. However, rather than determining the portion, you simply utilize the whole drive. Note that for this situation, it is suggested that the hard drive is same (or greater) in size than the source drive.
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc
This ought to have replicated the drive /dev/sdb with its parts on the objective hard drive /dev/sdc. You can check the progressions by posting the two drives with fdisk order.
# fdisk -l /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
Open Source “Disk Cloning/Backup” Tools for Linux Servers
1. Mondo Rescue
In contrast to other cloning programming, Mondo Rescue doesn't change over your hard drivers into an .img document, yet it will change over them into an .iso image, you can likewise make a custom Live CD with Mondo utilizing “mindi” which is an exceptional tool created by Mondo Rescue to clone your information from the Live CD.
It upholds most Linux appropriations, it additionally upholds FreeBSD, and it is authorized under GPL, You can introduce Mondo Rescue by utilizing the accompanying connection.
2. Clonezilla
Clonezilla is a Live CD based on Ubuntu & Debian to clone all your hard drive data or to take a backup, licensed under GPL 3, it is similar to Norton Ghost on Windows but more effective.
Features:
- Support for many file systems like ext2, ext3, ext4, btrfs, xfs, and many other filesystems.
- Support for BIOS and UEFI.
- Support for MPR and GPT partitions.
- Ability to reinstall grub 1 and 2 on any attached hard drive.
- Works on weak computers (200 MB of RAM is needed only).
3. Partimage
Partimage is an open-source software backup, by default it works under Linux system and available to install from the package manager for most Linux distributions, if you don’t have a Linux system installed by default you can use “SystemRescueCd” which is a Live CD that include Partimage by default to do the cloning process that you want.
4. FSArchiver
FSArchiver is a continuation of Partimage, also a good tool to clone hard disks, it supports cloning Ext4 partitions and NTFS partitions, here’s a list of features:
Features
- Support the basic file system attributes (label, UUID, blocksize) for all Linux file systems.
- Support for NTFS partitions of Windows and Ext of Linux and Unix Like.
- Support for checksums which enables you to check for data corruption.
- Support for basic file attributes like owner, permissions, etc.
- Support for extended attributes like those used by SELinux.
5. Partclone
Partclone is a free instrument to clone and reestablish parcels, written in C in first showed up in 2007, it upholds numerous filesystems like ext2, ext3, ext4, xfs, nfs, reiserfs, reiser4, hfs+, btrfs, and it is easy to utilize.
Authorized under GPL, it is accessible as an apparatus in Clonezilla also, you can download it as a bundle.
6. G4L
G4L is a free Live CD system to clone hard disk easily, it’s the main feature is that you can compress the filesystem, send it via FTP or CIFS or SSHFS or NFS to any location you want, it also supports GPT partitions since version 0.41, it is licensed under BSD license and available to download for free.
7. doClone
doClone is likewise a free programming project that is created to clone Linux framework parcels effectively, written in C++, it upholds up to 12 diverse filesystems, it can perform Grub bootloader reclamation and can change the clone picture to different PCs through LAN, it additionally upholds live cloning which implies that you can make a clone from the framework in any event, when it is going, doClone.
We hope that you have got an idea on how Disk Cloning can be done in Linux environment.
