Recomendation best hard drive cloning software

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UnrealCpu

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Jun 20, 2003
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Preferably one that gives accurate time of completion
Tried paragon 15 and it could not give me an accurate time when finished copying 4tb in a windows PE environment using a created rescue disk
 
bacon612 said:
I still swear by ghost in a PE environment. Its old school but never fails me.
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Is it Norton ghost 2015?

Also can this software detect changes in data to do incremental backups and file copies?

Big thing for me is that the time the software estimates upon completion. Paragon 15 was a joke telling me yesterday that it would be done in 24-38 min the whole 5 hours when transfering 4 tb
 
Cloning is 1 for 1 copy
If you need incremental backups, you need backup software not cloning.

For backup/incrementals I use backupassist or Cobian, time est is pretty good

I second the ghost in PE for cloning
 
dbwillis said:
Cloning is 1 for 1 copy
If you need incremental backups, you need backup software not cloning.

For backup/incrementals I use backupassist or Cobian, time est is pretty good

I second the ghost in PE for cloning
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http://pc-backup-review.toptenreviews.com/

Actually looks like acronistrue image, novabackup and easeUS todo backup made the top 10 best backup/cloning software

and yes there is software that does both

Norton 2015 from professional reviews says it has issues and is dated. Does not even show up on the top 10 for 2015
 
devman said:
Clonezilla. Been using it for years never had problems with it.
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This is what I use as well
You can use a small USB bootstick to clone/ deploy any OS (Apple OSX..Windows 8..ZFS Unix)
to/from a local disk or to/from a NFS/SMB share.
 
devman said:
Clonezilla. Been using it for years never had problems with it.
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Clonezilla is good, but be careful with it. I used to update versions of it pretty often because I like to update software in general. But even though I always use their "stable" releases, I've had some serious problems with it. I've used LZMA compression only to have it claim it was corrupted and fail to restore it. I've had versions that I had to use NTFSClone because the default one (partimage or whatever it is) failed. I've had versions that failed to work with any cloning method because "something" was being given an invalid parameter of some sort. Lots of various issues. I find that with Clonezilla, you need to find one version, verify it working, and stick with it for as long as possible. Or at the very least you need to be familiar with how it works so you can manually invoke the tools it uses in case you end up using a buggy version.

When cloning filesystems like NTFS/FAT for which there are many programs that can support it, I don't think Clonezilla is a great option because of the uncertainty. I would rather use Macrium Reflect or something else.

As much as I love Linux, I can't understand why Linux developers don't know what the word "stable" means. Clonezilla, the Linux kernel itself and many other Linux projects "release" broken code all too readily. I don't consider using a new Linux kernel series anymore until like the 3rd or 4th revision. I'll probably switch to 3.18.4.
 
Clonezilla is perfect and fast if you can clone a whole disk without any special (partition) settings where the target has at least the same size. In such a case I only needed a newer beta when the nic was not supported to clone to a share.
 
Acronis. Been using it since Win98. If you turn off compression it should be pretty accurate in its time estimates.
 
dr/owned said:
Acronis. Been using it since Win98. If you turn off compression it should be pretty accurate in its time estimates.
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Aomei backupper professional seems to also work for me now..
I am good thanks

very accurate and easy to use with windows PE interface and UI overall seems to be the best and easy to use out there for me. For home use anyway

provides easy to read menus with incremental and differential backups along with cloning etc. Not resource intensive either like acronis from what i am hearing caused alot of issus.

I used it before back in 2011 but all those extra features for me are not for me
 
UnrealCpu said:
Aomei backupper professional seems to also work for me now..
I am good thanks

very accurate and easy to use with windows PE interface and UI overall seems to be the best and easy to use out there for me. For home use anyway

provides easy to read menus with incremental and differential backups along with cloning etc. Not resource intensive either like acronis from what i am hearing caused alot of issus.

I used it before back in 2011 but all those extra features for me are not for me
Click to expand...


Good choice! I recently upgraded to Aomei Backupper Pro myself after the insane free offering. Probably because it's still new to the scene of disk imaging software. Only one that gives all free users the ability to do differential/incremental free of charge. Only reason to really upgrade for me was the disk management. The make you pay to delete old copies. Light weight and to the point. Macrium Reflect is another solid choice when it comes to free cloning/imaging software in a Windows environment.

As much as I love Paragon historically being my first imaging tool, that software has turned into a bloated POS these days. The minute you open it you're just bombarded with features that can be quite intimidating, and like you mentioned incredibly inaccurate/laggy feeling in general.
 
Liger88 said:
Good choice! I recently upgraded to Aomei Backupper Pro myself after the insane free offering. Probably because it's still new to the scene of disk imaging software. Only one that gives all free users the ability to do differential/incremental free of charge. Only reason to really upgrade for me was the disk management. The make you pay to delete old copies. Light weight and to the point. Macrium Reflect is another solid choice when it comes to free cloning/imaging software in a Windows environment.

As much as I love Paragon historically being my first imaging tool, that software has turned into a bloated POS these days. The minute you open it you're just bombarded with features that can be quite intimidating, and like you mentioned incredibly inaccurate/laggy feeling in general.
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Yeah i felt the same way you did with paragon. I am very satisfied with Aomei which was on the top 10 list pc mag review for 2015 . I think it was number 7 but had a gold star editor choice award. Very happy that it shows accurate times of completion and also the choice wheather you want to select sector by sector copy. I just opt out with that.
I did make a OS backup already and the menus are really easy to understand

I like how it shows all the backups you have done in the past too
also the way the hard drive information is all displayed. paragon was awful and had to use hard drive sentinel to verify each drive. I have 10 on my mobo alone and another 12 hdds in media sonic 4 bay enclosures. Each Modded with a silent fan . I used to deal with Raid back in the early 2000 with WD blacks and now i can see why Raid 0 or 1+0 would be great to use with imaging software. If i am only pulling 100 mb/s to 170mb/s , 250-350 mbs would be fast when making backups. I would rather keep my drives separate since raid is not a backup solution. Maybe raid 10 but still dont want to deal with reconstruction etc. THe games or programs i want to move fast go on my 1tb ssd anyway , everything is just file backup except my 5tb steam drive.
 
Forgot to mention for everyone reading this and using cloning software

Does cloning in a windows PE environment aka using the recovery bootup make your hard drive transfer faster?
 
UnrealCpu said:
Forgot to mention for everyone reading this and using cloning software

Does cloning in a windows PE environment aka using the recovery bootup make your hard drive transfer faster?
Click to expand...

It's not for speed so much as data integrity and such. You know your files won't be in use and that they won't change mid-backup when in PE. Same thing with other bootable cloning software that uses Linux and other environments aside from Windows PE. Clonezilla is one of many that uses Linux. Macrium Reflect has both PE and Linux versions available. etc.
 
Acronis TrueImage

Next to this, get yourself an Apricorn ASW-USB3-25 and use their bootable software. Even better and simpler than Acronis.

I've used Clonezilla many times before and have found it to be more problematic and unreliable than other available software for the same task. It's great that it is open source, but open source software doesn't always excel at quality.
 
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I settled on Acronis because it has caused the least problems and is well featured.
Other backup software may have these features, I'm listing what I like in Acronis as well as its stability.

Images can be restored in windows or from a boot CD, but you need to update your boot CD if you upgrade.
It does variable level compression, encryption and password protection.
You can browse images and copy information out when in windows.
It has a comprehensive schedule feature which is handy for my clients but I turn it off so I can disable the extra services.
It gives easy ways (but not that intuitive) to backup either the partition or whole drive and boot system.
Sector by sector backup for guaranteed non Windows OS compatibility and testing of file system issues.
Backup splitting over multiple files.
Can generate multiple copies of a backup.
etc...

The free versions that come with some products like SSDs may have restrictions like not working on the latest OS version, no password protection...
A free version that I got 2 years ago doesnt run in Windows 8 but can backup Windows 8 from Windows 7 and restore using any method. It has no password protection so anyone can browse and pull data from the images.
fyi
 
I have used Acronis TrueImage for a while now. It always seems to do what I need and hasn't had any issues.

I don't think there are many issues with any of them anymore.
 
is there any good and trustworthy comparison of imaging software out there that actually describes exacly what each app has: OSes supported, MBR/EFI supported( yes/no), native fakeraid support (in-built drivers for most popular chipsets), network drives mapping, how long propertiary file format is supported over the years (e.g Paragon moving to VD files and not supporting their old format in the 2k15 version), etc ??

I am trying to create my personal universal cloning USB. I want all of my machines (also my family) to use the same image format and I do not want to change the app for the next few years, hence the question in the first caption. Right now I have some images in Ghost, two in Clonezilla (i stopped using it since it did not run on one PC at all), some in paragon, some in easeus... i need to have new ones in order.

I have read that Acronis has a startup manager launched during startup by pressing F11 - anyone knows if that is available under UEFI or BIOS or both? Or maybe someone using paid version of Acronis on different systems and configurations can elaborate about it.

edit:
can anyone confirm that VDs created by Acronis and Paragon are compatible?
 
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_Gea said:
Clonezilla is perfect and fast if you can clone a whole disk without any special (partition) settings where the target has at least the same size.
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Au contraire my friend, Clonezilla can be used to clone from a larger drive (say 1TB) to a smaller drive (say 500GB). It can be done as long as the total size of all partitions for the larger drive are shrunk down to be less space than the total size of the smaller drive. I've done a successful drive clone from a larger drive to a smaller drive four times now (Win7 & Win8.1 OS's complete with recovery partitions and special vendor partitions, UEFI and BIOS motherboards).

The process is probably a bit more involved than a cut and dry drive-to-drive clone because it requires using the expert settings along with priming the new drive by pre-creating a partition structure (use Gparted livecd) and finally manually editing a few meta-data files that Clonezilla produces when performing a dd based partition backup operation (this requires re-calculating the partition structure metadata to fit within the limits of the new drive while maintaining the same partition sizes as were present on the original drive you backed-up.

Anyway, thats the short explanation. I wrote a step-by-step guide for using Clonezilla to Clone a larger drive to a smaller drive in response to an inquiry in the General Mayhem sub-forum, but that is behind the paywall here, so if you or anyone else is interested, I can either PM the instructions to you, or I could re-post it in a new thread (its much too long an instruction set to post here without thread-jacking the entire topic).
 
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Partition Wizard is a superb bit of software. Been using it for years for cloning and management.

However, a lot of my cloning now takes place in a dual SATA dock. Press two buttons and make a cup of coffee.

No need for the PC to be switched on.
 
Bringing this thread back from the dead
Ran into a issue with Amoei backupper. Thought it would suit my needs and do everything i told it with estimate completion times etc
however ran into a issue copying just a NTFS partition with no OS. I booted up via USB with Amoei backupper and selected disk clone a 5tb drive containing basic music, movies, etc. to a new 8tb hard drive that was formated to NTFS. I edited the partitions to make the new hard drive keep its space. I did not do a sector by sector .. Once finished i booted into windows 8.1 and noticed a 341gb folder always becomes corrupted along with the recycle bin on the 8tb drive.
So either this backup program is a complete POS or i am doing something wrong which i am pretty sure im not. The only other way i can think of now is using terra copy or explorer but is that really safe and just doing folder by folder but is that really safe?
Please advise or recommend me a new cloning software that will do it right. Obliviously i cant trust this program
thank you

I have scanned both hard drives and no errors have been found so its not the hard drives
 
Nenu said:
Might be an incompatibility with 8TB.
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how so ? it finished just fine with no errors. As soon as i get into windows i can access folders other than the 341gb folder which will give me a message saying it needs administrator privileges, i say yes to the command and then the folder goes corrupted.
 
When you have more information that might sway how we interpret how it works, its a good idea to post that first rather than later pointing out logical inconsistencies that didnt exist before.
 
Nenu said:
When you have more information that might sway how we interpret how it works, its a good idea to post that first rather than later pointing out logical inconsistencies that didnt exist before.
Click to expand...

I am updating my software to the latest version. I will give it one more try to tonight to see if it fixes the issue. There should not be any issues since i am booting in a windows PE
pure environment and doing a disk clone. Do you know anything about file security permissions when disk cloning and how it may be affected when rebooting in windows 8.1?


What information would like you know so you can make a logical conclusion? If you can not even advise me of what information you need then you should relook at yourself before posting about logical inconsistencies and how things might interpret how it works.
btw
Everything is done through administrator privileges.
 
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