Any suggestions for decent and free cloning software?

[emeraldgirl08]

The title says it all. I figure its about time I learn how to use cloning software to save installations from my machines to an external drive. I also would like a free and easy solution if possible. I did a reinstall yesterday and throughout the procedure I felt that applying a cloned copy to the target drive might be more efficient rather than waiting for all the updates, reinstalling software, etc. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

[GACrabill]

I like Paragon's "Backup & Recovery 2013 Free" :
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br ... tures.html

It has Backup and Recovery capabilites, and an "iso" folder/file for creating a bootable rescue CD.

The bootable CD can be used for creating backup images, restoring from backup images, or copying a physical drive to another (cloning). It does automatic "alignment" so it has been the perfect solution for me when I need to clone an HDD to an SSD. I have "copied" ("cloned") both XP and Win7 HDDs to SSDs with this product's bootable CD. The results have worked perfectly and the copied/cloned SSDs booted and ran properly. They were also "aligned" according to the "AS SSD" product.

Some folks like building the OS from scratch when upgrading to an SSD .... I am not one of them. Cloning works fine for me and saves me tons of time.

The only issue that I have had with the bootable Paragon CD is that it really doesn't like the old Pentium-M processor in my T40 ... something about "old" and "requires a PAE processor". I was able to get it to run on the T40 when I chose the bootable GUI's "safe mode" (vs. it's normal mode) ... but that made the USB ports run at 1.0 or 1.1 speeds and the resulting "clone" worked fine, but the cloning process took 25 hours instead of 2 hours. I think I'll use a T60 next time I need to do a copy/clone process.

[ZaZ]

If you don't mind a rebate, sometimes you can find True Image FAR.

[emeraldgirl08]

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

I like the idea of using a bootable CD or USB device to run the program. That actually would make the process easier for me. I am still open to other suggestions for software peeps! How about clonezilla or macrium reflect? Any testimony on how user friendly those programs are?

[ajkula66]

I like Clonezilla.

Rarely do I clone anything, but when I do, that's my software of choice.

[ch27]

I have found Redo Backup to work well (live cd, simple and free) - redobackup.org

[twistero]

+1 for Clonezilla. I do full-disk images with a live CD and write the image directly to a NAS.

I would also suggest Parted Magic, which is a Linux live CD that includes Clonezilla and many other useful tools for partitioning / data rescue, but the author of Parted Magic now charges $5 for downloads. (This puts him in an interesting position, since all the software included in PM are free (as in speech) software, and can be distributed freely by anyone. Therefore, anyone can buy his download and host it somewhere else for free, legally.)

[WillAdams]

I've used xxclone in the past --- if I can't get Mac OS X on my x61, I guess I'll be using it to clone Vista unless I can find a reasonably priced windows 7 license, or set up Linux so that it's workable.