Great, excellent video clip. As a non-native English speaker I appreciate this clearly spoken presentation. No annoying music, no boring details. Just facts I need. Thx
Been through most backup/imaging solution out there since early 2000's. Ultimate tool for me turned out to be CloneZilla indeed. I've become long-term user, advocate and supporter. Glad to see the tool crawling out of geeky niche, and hitting mainstream finally.
This is exactly what Ive been looking for. Creating a family home Nas server, and I wanted to backup directly to the server. This is great. Thanks Chris!
A small tip to follow this video: Clonezilla image is about 300MB (less for older versions), flash drives can be as big as 120GB (or more), and you don't really need separate drives to use Clonezilla. You do need separate partitions though. So after writing Clonezilla to flash drive, you can repartition the disk to reclaim the remaining space as another partition, that would allow you to select that partition on same disk as /home/partimag and have a bit less flash drives' juggling in the process.
You can also jut use Ventoy with the free space at the end to make your flashdrive multiboot. That way you can keep different linux distros / windows installers and clonezilla bootable on the same usb stick and make your usb stick multirole bootable drive with the spare storage partition.
I use Clonezilla at work for making/restoring images of our CentOS surveillance systems. The best way that I found, to use recovery, was to make a live recovery ISO so you can run Clonezilla environment and have the image all on one USB drive. It's a couple step process but once you have the Live restore ISO, you can image it (Rufus, dd, etc.) to other USB drives later. We ship this Live restore USB with all of our systems so customers have a recovery option if something goes wrong. The key thing for doing this option is that you have to make sure the drive that you backup (sda, sdb, etc.) is the same on the machine that you are recovering. Best way that I found is to make sure the backup drive is sda (first disk, disable other drives in BIOS) and then on the recovery, just unplug/disable in BIOS all drives leaving the target disk as the only drive accessible (making it sda or the first drive). There are ways in Clonezilla to convert the partition name...but not fun. Just some food for thought if you want this all on one USB.
Deja vu. I just went through all this about two weeks ago. The hard drive in my main desktop was failing. I used Clonezilla to make a carbon copy of the system drive to a new drive. Of course i also upgraded the drive to a larger size. Clonezilla handled it perfectly. Since I was cloning a failing drive, I opted to do the file system checks before and after the clone. All I can add is that if this 61 year old boomer can do it; So can you!
I used Clonezilla several years ago to copy my Windows 7 Professional installation onto a bigger hard drive because I was running out of space and didn't feel like doing a complete re-install. Once I booted back into Windows 7 on the new hard drive, I was able to use the partition manager provided by Windows to expand the partition to fill the new hard drive. I used the device-to-device mode since I had both drives connected to the PC.
Agreed. Not the most intuitive thing to use but Clonezilla is the best way to save multiple bare metal setups of your PC. Thanks for taking time to clarify its use. Later Chris!!
Clonezilla isn't bad in a pinch. For FOSS and user friendly, I have been using RescueZilla. The next release will be able to backup to and restore from images created with Clonezilla. RescueZilla is based on an older project called Redo Backup & Restore which had been a dormant project for several years. It has recently been picked up again by (I believe) the original developer under the name Redo Rescue. Both projects are worth a look.
After using CloneZilla for many many years I switched to RescueZilla and I can say I will not go back, it's so much better and more feature complete, it makes CloneZilla look confusing and outdated as hell.
This is the best software for data backup and clone also it supports multicasting and unicasting (over network but required to setup Clonezilla Server SE and PXE boot from clients PC ). APFS not supported but Sector to sector backup will do the trick for newer Macs running macOS High Sierra (on SSD) or Later. Note: macOS High Sierra on mechanical hard drive uses HFS+ and sector to sector backup means clonezilla uses dd command in background regardless what the file system is. Just one more thing BootCamp will be backed up on all intel based mac and finally macrium reflect will do the same but it's not completely free and only available for windows so you need to use the the free edition of rescue image and boot from the mac then clone or backup the entire drive. Thank you for this video
I have used it for a few years now. First just to back up our server and later I used it on Windoz. Its great takes the operating system and all. I have gotten mixed up once and wiped a drive I was trying to backup. Thank God I had other backups, BE CAREFUL. I never knew what the second option did so that will help me because the old eyes are not as good as they once were.
My company sells and uses Clonezilla (with Hardware, currently a HDD) with a special script for our CNC controls. But we made it easy enough for any user to do that. (it's literally like that: Do you want to restore or backup? Is it one of our controls or a PC? What's the file name of the backupfile? That's it.) Doing that without our version would be (obviously) possible, but kinda painful because you can't backup some partitions but need to backup multiple (yep, we have about 10 partitions in total). And before somebody asks, yes we give you the source code of the software we use (if the license mandates it) if you ask for it, that includes out modified Linux kernel.
Lots of comments about cloning vs. rsync. Both have their special merits, but as tools they're not the same. Rsync is mainly for doing directory-based backups and it allows leaving out filetypes or directories you don't want backed up. This is what TimeShift is for and comparing it Clonezilla is just a misunderstanding of the purpose of CloneZilla. Cloning is a different operation, here's the way I've used it: from time to time I've had to re-install my sons PC with Windows. After booting for the first time M(es)S Windows and having installed all the required software, I made a full cloned image of the C:\ - drive. That way, eventually, when my son messed up his Win- installation with viruses and malware - oh, the joy of Flash-based browser games.. - I just root-canaled the hard drive by re-partitioning and restored it to its "native" state with Clonezilla. With all configurations and what-not. All other (safe) data can then be restored with rsync, if necessary. Repairing or trying to repair a f-ed up Windows system is just hopeless. Defrag, anyone?
Thanks Chris for this video! Another useful thing to know is that some live images of Linux distro (e.g. Arch Linux and Manjaro) also have gparted and clonezilla out of the box! So just live boot e.g. the Arch Linux ISO and execute clonezilla from there! Saved me a bit of trouble :)
Statistically, you should get this comment all the time. But the timing on this couldn't be better for me, as I was about to make a post on Manjaro forums about it. Cheers brother
Thanks Chris your videos are really informative. You speak the truth according to your knowledge & experience. Your channel is my go to resource for Backup solutions, NAS, personal desktop OS, pretty much everything.
Clonezilla has saved my ass several times, and helped me restoring a lot of computers to the state they should be before using them for edumacation. Great tool! And I don't mind the interface, that's how long I've been using it :-D
It works. I tried it. I prefer using another paid product because I can do it without rebooting. If I was linux, it would be my #1 choice. Not to many people do this. I do it all the time. Upgrade from 7200 to 10000 rpm hard drive, no problem, to ssd, no problem, to NVME, kinda sketchy but works if you preload drivers that were deleted on the net or if you have a system that supports the newer technology. Thing is, there are other pci-e devices which work on any system or OS, but they are expensive and difficult to buy. What NVME misses is a BIOS Firmware layer which does the active translation. If they did this, you could plug it into anything and run without a driver. They don't want you to do that. Resizing is another issue. My cloning software can clone to smaller or larger storage devices on the fly intelligently.
Clonezilla is a great piece of software and quite reliable which is very important., i've been using it more than 10 years for all my system backups, no problems so far. Also system rescue image is a great tool if you want clonezilla, gparted, desktop enviroment , terminal , firefox all in one! Firefox comes handy for searching the net for solutions , forums, linux commands or just pass your time waiting for your backups to finish.
Two things, one is you can always create a disk image using gnome disk utility. Select the drive on the left side go to the top menu and select restore disk select your image and restore. Second item, most live ISO's include clonezilla and garted. I include them in my ISO.
Greatest tool ever I set up a pxe-boot solution with clonezilla that lets a customer install a windows 11 syspreped image to any computer. No need to use MS bloated deploy stack this way.
Chris - can I suggest you do a video on Rescuezilla? It is a 2020 rewrite of the old Redo Rescue that is fully compatible with Clonezilla. The key point is that it has a GUI that is unambiguous and easy to follow. It also contains many useful utilities.
I love clonezilla too. Thanks for the great video Chris. I would add that “(*) Rescue” mode is awesome too. If you have a degraded drive that a client brings you, in a system, that they insist they want you to try and mirror onto a new hard drive, it rocks. Don’t forget to back up user files first, before the clone. It’s disk load intensive on a degraded drive, and could cause the old drive to completely fail while on the bench. Then run an SFC once on the new drive to make sure the OS is in good shape.
For a degraded drive, I find *ddrescue* a great command line tool. E.g. when copying from a near-dead drive to an image, on a first pass it tries to read good parts only, skipping read errors. After it's done with a first pass, it goes on trying to read the skipped parts, splitting them into smaller and smaller chunks just to get as much data out as soon as possible.
Hi! I have a separate boot and root partition, both encrypted, and the disk is gpt. Can clonezilla clone the entire disk including all the partitions, so that I can restore it to a drive of the same size or larger?
Thanks, I agree 100% about Clonezilla. I have Clonezilla on a DVD & even though it slower to use than a flash drive, I can restore a small Windows image in well under 15 minutes.
If we backup a windows system will it back up C + all other drives present or will it backup only the C drive? Also, when restoring back windows do we get an option to chose which drive the restore needs to go into? Thanks!
Given this is just one open for cloning, can you do a video that takes a deeper dive into cloning that covers most of the options and suggests the best tools? I just spent a ton of time down that rabbit hole, so I can appreciate a better look at the subject. Thx
Clonezilla is a huge pain. Installed it on bootable usb, but computer won't recognize it, or throws back an error, etc., etc. Tried it multiple times. Every time, it gives a different reasons for why it's not working. Formatted the USB, repeated the process, came back empty handed. I hope they improve this.
Great video Chris! Been keeping an eye out for an open source solution like this. Curious about the RAT though. Video about that? I have a few Linux and Windows machines that it'd be super useful to remote access. Looks almost exactly like how RMM modules function on some server boards.
I have never been able to get CloneZilla to actually RECOVER a failed backup to a new drive. The replacement drive has to be the EXACT same size or larger than the original. Heck, even larger drives mostly fail recovery anyways. And forget "cloning" a 500GB to a 250SSD. Aint gonna happen. Even resizing partitions with GParted or the Windows disk management. Nope. diskgenius. has been my go to for a while now. The free version works great!
when using dd , triple check your of=/dev/sdX (X being the drive wanted) statement . IF YOU CHOOSE THE WRONG DRIVE ALL DATA WILL BE OVERWRITTEN AND WILL NOT BE RECOVERABLE. if you take a drive that has been overwrite with dd to a recovery firm, they will most likely refuse to try if you tell them you used dd.
Nice walk through. Clonezilla is great, but I wish it was more intuitive. It would be perfect if you could clone larger drives to smaller ones and automatically shrink the partition.
@Donald Mickunas You would think it would be possible. I often replace 1TB hdds with 250GB ssds. Most users use less than 100GB of data. I'm usually stuck with windows tools for this. I used to use ghost, but it doesn't work for gpt partitions.
Will siemens nxcad 11.0 run comfortably on windows 10 virtually installed( using oracle virtual box) on ubuntu 18.04lts ? ( i have only hdd of 1Tb only and i5 8th gen) plz reply, i'm beginner???
I really don't like Clonezilla as a "backup" tool, for Linux especially. rsync is far more suited for this kind of job. Cause when you backup you want to sync the data (i.e. write only the changes) but Clonezilla just images the drive which rewrites the whole thing and the backup is not really browsable. Now for cloning and imaging it's great.
I recently had a failure with Clonezilla. I had a linux system which I backed up with Clonezilla and the Clonezilla image was stored on a new thumb-drive. Over the years I have never had a problem with Clonezilla - so it was my typical backup utility. However - at the time I made the Clonezilla backup I also performed a backup using Timeshift And the Timeshift backup data was stored on an external hard-drive. I was unable to restore the system using Clonezilla because at the step in which one is to insert the thumb drive which contains the backup image to be restored - Clonezilla was unable to recognize the thumb-drive when it was plugged into the PC. All other systems readily recognized that thumb-drive without a problem. But for some reason Clonezilla in that machine was unable to recognize it. So I was unsuccessful at recovering that machine using Clonezilla. Fortunately - the Timeshift backup worked flawlessly.
no need for parted or any thing else to expand the image into the space on the new drive. Really needed when you upgrade a boot drive. Instead of Beginner use Expert. Add one checked box, Expand into available space... or something like that... going from memory. The three partitions on a standard Windows boot drive will be expanded to use all the new bigger drive. This might make the recovery and the EFI partitions a bit lager than need be, but not a big deal.
Great video! I'm trying to restore an image to an external drive through Virtualbox. However, the speed slows down to a halt and do not complete. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
I can tell by the color scheme that CTT is using the Debian version of Clonezilla Live. Don't. The Ubuntu version of Clonezilla Live is _NOTICEABLY_ better. And, I am using it to backup (and restore) a Debian-based distro of desktop Linux. I have been using Clonezilla Live for over a year. I am using my 3rd version of Clonezilla Live. For the 1st two, I tried both the Debian and Ubuntu versions. Each time, the Debian version was slower at each user-input step and threw many more errors on boot. The current Ubuntu version of Clonezilla (i.e. based on Focal Fossa) is the best, yet. Faster. No boot errors. If one is backing up multiple partitions, I recommend using "saveparts". As I am dual-booting (via UEFI) and using a partition to share files between Linux and Windows, I have 6 partitions (1 FAT32/EFI, 1 Microsoft Reserved, 3 NTFS, 1 EXT4/Linux-system) plus 1 linux-swap partition. Linux-swap partitions are not saved or restored by Clonezilla Live. Using "saveparts" and "restoreparts" allows me to choose which ones I want to save _and_ which ones I want restore. Why restore an entire device (30-60 minutes) when I _usually_ need to restore only 1 system partition (19 GiB in-use; 2-3 minutes)? Desktop Linux is my primary OS, but I use Windows 10, occasionally. Windows 10 must be "Shutdown" (i.e. not in "Reboot" status) in order for Clonezilla Live to make a backup of a Windows system partition. Here is a step-by-step list of how I use Clonezilla Live to "saveparts": 1. Shutdown or reboot Linux 2. Startup into grub 3. Select and start Windows 4. Logon to any account with "shutdown" privileges 5. Shutdown Windows 6. Insert Clonezilla Live USB media and connect external storage (i.e. backup target or restore source). 7. Power up, pressing my BIOS's "choose boot device" hotkey (or you can just set the Clonezilla Live USB as the top boot option in the BIOS boot order; ahead of one's internal storage bootloaders) 8. Select the device with Clonezilla Live and press 9. Follow the prompts, selecting the backup/restore device and directory (tabbing or right-arrow to "DONE"), and continue to the backup/restore options (i.e. press ) 10. Choose "saveparts" 11. Name the backup (tip: I do not use CapsLock, as I have mistakenly entered my encryption password with it still on) 12. Choose the partitions on your internal storage to save 13. Choose default compression; Skip checking filesystem; Skip checking image is restorable; Encrypt backup; poweroff on completion (so I can just walk away after it starts and return at my convenience, sans powering an unattended, completed backup; the 1st two partitions on my NVMe, however, are the UEFI and a small RAW partition, which save in seconds; followed by the Windows system partition, so I wait to ensure the Windows system partition starts backing up, as I have encountered problems when it appears to have shutdown _incorrectly_ ...prompting "Do you want to continue?" or whatever... in which case I cancel the backup and return to step 2, so I can retry step 5 "Shutdown Windows") 14. Follow prompts, enter the encryption password, and confirm that the partitions to be saved are correct; press 'y' then to proceed (completes in 40-60 minutes, with my hardware and all 6 partitions) After backing up, I leave everything connected. Then I begin the "check-img-restorable" process: 1. Repeat steps 7-9 "saveparts" (above) 2. Choose "check-img-restorable" 3. Select the backup image created earlier and press 4. Enter the _correct password_ and continue 5. Check back periodically to see the results after completion (takes 30-40 minutes, with my hardware and all 6 partitions) 6. Look for "ALL partitions appear to be restorable", and for any problems 7. Press enter to continue 8. Choose "poweroff" 9. After the device has powered off, disconnect the Clonezilla Live USB media and the external storage To restore a backup: 1. Repeat steps 7-9 from "saveparts" (above) 2. Choose "restoreparts" 3. Repeat steps 3-5 from "check-img-restorable" (above), choosing the partitions to be restored (in any combination, 1-N) 4. Look for "ALL partitions were restored successfully", and for any problems 5. Repeat steps 7-9 from "check-img-restorable" (above) 6. Power on and verify the restore (i.e. hands-on, "reality" check)
On the first screen if you go to page 2 you can boot from ram, and then write to the same drive as clonezilla. I have a 2tb drive with clonezilla on it and my backups all on same backup drive
As much as I love Clonezilla and I know it uses dd, I still find raw dd is sometimes the only tool that can successfully copy some non standard formats and layouts
I know it's been awhile. I went device to device to clone a mechanical current system to an NvMe of the same size, and tried to boot off the NvMe and it won't boot. Is it because I still have the mechanical drive in the system that it's booting off of that or do I need to make the image and then restore it to transfer it to my Samsung NvMe M.2?
Unfortunately this was just a basic example, but it's not always as simple as this. In my case, I wanted to upgrade the laptop's (500Gb) hard-drive to a (120Gb) SSD. I emptied the drive out until it was small enough, then shrank the 15Gb recovery partition down to 11Gb (there was 4Gb of unused space going to waste), then cloned the drive. Windows boots fine, but I had to fix the MBR to get winmemtest working, and Windows Repair won't run ("can't find the device") and the Acer recovery D2D won't run. 😕 I can only assume that the Windows Recovery environment is looking for the .wim file using hard-coded low-level descriptors rather than something like "C:" and that the Acer laptop-recovery tool is checking for the D2D image at a specific sector or something (I'd try setting the recovery partition back to 15Gb but that's not doable right now).
Thanks for the video Chris, but I am surprised that there isn't a "Noob Mode" that I would probably use 99% of the time, just to backup and restore image files... The whole process could have been made much simpler IMHO... I know I'll have to do it a dozen times (backup and restore) to be sure I understand before I touch real data...
Been using CZ at work for years. Recently Dell started changing their BIOS GUI and moving options around. Have you used CZ on a newer Dell Latitude, like a 7420 or newer?
Clonezilla makes byte level copy of the drive/partition. So the new drive will have the exact same partition(s) as the old which means it'll have the exact same drivers as old.
Hi Chris, thanks for the vid. Very helpful. I did have a question though. You mentioned in this video that you shrank your data down to ensure that the image created was not too large for the target drive. I have a situation where the usb image occasionaly is too large for the target drive. Can you describe how I can shrink the image down.
