It's inevitable: at some point, you'll need to recover from a disaster. An old hard drive might fail and you might lose valuable data, or the machine might refuse to boot. When this happens, if you have a backup image or clone of the damaged or corrupted source disk, recovering your data to a new disk will be much easier.
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Unfortunately, hard drive imaging software like Acronis Backup and Restore may not be affordable for everyone. When you're on a budget, what do you do? You use one of the disk imaging tools listed here, all of which do an admirable job of cloning hard drives at an unbeatable price and for free.
Some of these hard drive cloning apps are more powerful than others. While some make a bit-for-bit copy, others create a complete ISO image of your running system. Some are Windows-specific, and others don't care what operating system you're running. In the end, the important thing is that you use the tool that best suits your skills and needs.
Best free hard drive cloning software
Clonezilla: Ideal for deployment on multiple systems
Clonezilla is one of my favorite hard drive cloning tools. This particular take on the cloning process is more like a bootable Linux distribution that can do bitwise copies and supports a ton of filesystems (including FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, UFS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, xfs, jfs, btrfs, f2fs, nilfs2, and even LVM2). It has built-in unattended mode and multicast support, as well as the ability to reinstall the Grub bootloader.
Clonezilla may be the most powerful disk copying tool available that is priceless. And if you are looking to clone multiple machines quickly, Clonezilla SE can clone 40 machines at once. Clonezilla uses a curses-based interface, so some people may find it a bit difficult at first.
Highlighted Features
- Ability to run from USB: You can run Clonezilla from a USB, so there is no need to install the tool on the operating system. You can even boot Clonezilla from a CD/DVD or do a network boot.
- Supports a wide range of file formats: Clonezilla supports numerous file formats including NTFS, FAT, ext2, ext3 and ext4.
- Various restoration options: Not only can you save images to various storage media, but you can also restore images from multiple sources such as network services or local storage.
| Advantages | Cons |
| Highly customizable. | The interface is not user friendly and looks outdated. |
| Strong encryption. | No direct download. |
Macrium Reflect Free Edition: The best choice for reliability
Macrium Reflect Free Edition is touted as one of the fastest disk cloning utilities out there. This hard drive cloning software only supports Windows file systems, but it does it quite well and has a fairly simple user interface. This software performs disk imaging and disk cloning, allows access to images from the file manager, creates a Linux rescue CD, and is compatible with Windows.
The free edition of Macrium is also capable of creating differential images, performing direct disk cloning, initiating backups in a Hyper-V virtual machine, running scheduled backups, performing bare metal restores, and even encrypting backups.
Highlighted Features
- Schedule automatic backups: You can schedule backups in advance so you don't have to remember to do them.
- Multiple backups: With the commercial version of Macrium Reflect, you can schedule multiple backups to ensure that all devices on your network are backed up at the same time.
- Full Image Backup: You can choose to back up individual files or images or perform a full backup of the entire disk.
- Create boot drive: You can load Macrium Reflect from a removable media such as a USB.
| Advantages | Cons |
| Lifetime license. | There is no file sync. |
| Reliable image backups. | No cloud backup. |
DriveImage XML – ideal for basic users
DriveImage XML uses Microsoft VSS to create images, and does so with a reliability you wouldn't expect from a free tool. With DriveImage XML you can create “live” images from a hard drive that's already in use. Images are stored in XML files, so you can access them from any compatible third-party software. DriveImage XML can also restore an image to a machine without requiring a reboot.
This imaging software works on Windows XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. It is important to note that DriveImage XML cannot be used for commercial purposes. To use this product for commercial purposes, you must obtain a license. You can purchase a commercial license of DriveImage XML for 5 ($100), 10 ($150), 20 ($200), 50 ($400), and 100 ($500) users.
Highlighted Features
- User-friendly interface: Although DriveImage XML doesn't offer advanced features like security encryption or network backup, the clean, organized interface makes it easy to navigate.
- Volume Shadow Copy Services: With DriveImage XML, VSS is used to create images of active systems. This helps in creating backups without interrupting operations.
- Browse individual files: You can browse the files on the image drive before restoring the entire disk. This is a useful tool when you need a specific file from a backup.
| Advantages | Cons |
| Easy to use. | Limited support. |
| No reboot required. | No encryption or network backup. |
EaseUS Todo Backup – The Best Choice for a Variety of Backup Methods
EaseUS Todo Backup is one of the best free hard drive cloning software that offers a wide range of cloning options, including partition cloning. With EaseUS Todo Backup, users can perform full or incremental backups, and can schedule them. Paid plans add more functionality to the software through advanced tools such as command-line backup, email notifications, and offsite copies.
Highlighted Features
- Variety of backup methods: Users can save multiple backups to cloud drive or local disk.
- Select folders and files to backup: You can choose which folders or files you want to back up. This feature helps prioritize business-critical data.
- Backup Partition: EaseUS Todo Backup allows users to create backups of specific partitions
| Advantages | Cons |
| Wide range of cloning options. | Slow backup speed. |
| Easy to use interface. | Lack of continuous backups. |
Paragon Backup & Recovery Free – Best for easy backup and recovery
Paragon Backup & Recovery Free is for standalone Windows computers and does an excellent job of handling scheduled imaging. The Community Edition of Paragon can schedule file, volume, and/or disk backups; define backup strategies; manage disk space; control versions; view backup content, and even perform WinPE recoveries. It also has an intuitive user interface.
The free version is based on the powerful pro version, but is for personal use only. I highly recommend using the free version to test the software. If it suits your needs, pay for the full version (or even the server version). Paragon will run on any version of Windows, from version 7 SP1 to the latest.
Highlighted Features
- Combination of full or incremental and differential backup: With Paragon Backup & Recovery Free, you can configure a combination of full or differential backups. This is a unique feature not available in most hard drive cloning and imaging solutions.
- Variety of recovery options: You can recover your entire system or choose to take a more granular approach by choosing the data you want to restore.
| Advantages | Cons |
| Back up data to virtual hard drives. | No partition images. |
| Variety of backup rotation schemes. | There is no customer support forum. |
Honorable Mention: Linux dd Command
As a bonus, I thought it was worth mentioning Linux Ear command, which does a great job of cloning drives. And the best part is that it's already built into the operating system.
You can use dd to create a disk image or byte to copy bytes. Note: You do not want to run this command on a mounted drive that is in use. Your best bet is to boot the machine containing the drive with an active Linux distribution, find the name of the drive to be cloned, and issue a command like
dd if=/dev/sdX of=/image.img
where X is the letter assigned to the drive to be cloned.
You can also make a direct copy to disk.
dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY
where X is the name of the drive to be cloned and Y is the name of the drive that will host the clone.
How to Choose the Right HDD Cloning Software for Your Business
You've been looking for a free backup solution to help you clone disks. With one of these five, you should now have a solution in hand. Yes, some of them may be a little tricky to use, and others may not have all the features you're looking for; however, each one should allow you to clone a source disk to a destination disk so your disaster recovery plan can become a reality. Hopefully, you won't need anything else, but there's a little law named after a man named Murphy that might have something to say about that.
