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Clonezilla

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Clonezilla
Original author(s)Steven Shiau
Developer(s)NCHC Free Software Labs
Initial release8 September 2007 (2007-September-08)
Stable release
3.2.0-5[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 15 October 2024; 25 days ago (15 October 2024)
Preview release
3.1.1-1[2] / May 7, 2023; 18 months ago (2023-05-07)
Repository
Written inPerl, Unix shell
Operating systemPOSIX, Linux
Available inEnglish, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional)
TypeDisk cloning, disk imaging, system deployment
LicenseGPL
Websiteclonezilla.org

Clonezilla is an open-source suite of disk cloning, disk imaging and system deployment utilities.[3][4][5] Clonezilla Server Edition uses multicast technologies to deploy a single image file to a group of computers on a local area network.[5] Clonezilla was designed by Steven Shiau and developed by the NCHC Free Software Labs in Taiwan.[6][7][8][9]

Clonezilla is used to deploy operating systems to computers by imaging a single computer and then deploying that image to one or more systems.[3][10] It integrates several other open-source programs to provide cloning and imaging capabilities.

Clonezilla works by copying used blocks on the storage device (i.e. SATA SSD, HDD or NVMe SSD).[4] It is intended to support a bare-metal deployment of an operating system by booting from a preinstalled live environment. The preinstallation environment can be booted from a USB flash drive, CD/DVD-ROM or Android mobile phone.[11][12][5] It uses Partclone, Ntfsclone, Partimage, or dd to image the drive either over the network or to a locally-attached hard disk drive.[4]

Features

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Block-level copying

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Clonezilla can operate on block-level (sector by sector). Thus, its operation could be file system-agnostic. In other words, it can clone one disk to another without knowing what partitions or file systems the source disk has. This indiscriminate approach, however, is inefficient because it would mean copying every block, even if it does not contain meaningful data. Therefore, Clonezilla uses a smart file system-aware approach. It uses information from the file system to determine which blocks on a drive require copying. This ensures that only the space currently in use on the drive is copied while empty space is ignored. Clonezilla supports Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, Btrfs, NTFS, FAT, exFAT and more. For unsupported file systems, Clonezilla falls back to indiscriminate block-level copying.[4]

By default, clonezilla uses Partclone but may fall back to Ntfsclone, Partimage, and dd where appropriate. The app also supports LVM2 and some hardware RAID chip sets.[4]

Compression

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Clonezilla uses the ZIP compression by default but can use other schemes such as gzip, LZMA or bzip2.[13] Drive images can be split into smaller files and compressed to save space on the destination drive.[4]

Encryption

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Clonezilla supports creating password-protected images.[14] In addition, it can mount BitLocker-encrypted volumes.

PXE booting

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Clonezilla can be booted over a computer network using PXE booting techniques.[4]

Variants

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Selecting between clone and image mode
Cloning from disk to disk

There are two variants of Clonezilla: Clonezilla Live is intended to be used for imaging a single computer, while Clonezilla Server Edition (SE) is intended for mass deployment over a computer network.[4]

Clonezilla Live

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Clonezilla Live can image a single computer's storage media or a single partition on the media to an image file stored on a SSH server, Samba network share, locally-attached hard disk drive or to a network filesystem file-share.[4][5] Alternatively, Clonezilla Live can clone the data on one storage medium to another without the need to create an image file first. Image files can be deployed to the same or different computers as required.

Unlike Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and Norton Ghost, Clonezilla lacks an agent that can be installed into the operating system. Instead, Clonezilla was designed under the assumption that the disk should be cloned without interfering with the operating system. It is booted from a preinstallation environment and operations are performed within a consistent environment.[5]

Clonezilla Server Edition (SE)

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Clonezilla Server Edition (SE) can clone many computers at the same time using multicast technology over a computer network.[15] Multicast support is provided by UDPCast tool.[4]

Since such an environment is difficult to configure, users can download a Live disk that provides the operating system with all the necessary configurations already done.[4] Images are uploaded to an image repository configured by the user, which may be a local directory on the same server as Clonezilla SE or a remote location such as a network-attached storage that is accessed using SSH or Samba.

Effectiveness

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Clonezilla is an effective tool for deploying software in training laboratories.[15][3][10] Clonezilla can sometimes be faster than Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and Norton Ghost for both imaging and restoration but can be difficult to configure. Clonezilla, however, is not a backup or disaster recovery solution because it does not offer incremental and differential snapshots, scheduling, or interruption-free operation.[16]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Steven Shiau (15 October 2024). "[Clonezilla-release] Stable Clonezilla live 3.2.0-5 Released". Retrieved 16 October 2024.
  2. ^ Shiau, Steven. "Clonezilla - Downloads". Clonezilla.org. Retrieved 2023-05-14.
  3. ^ a b c Turriza, Jose Luis Lira; Manuel, José; Huh, Yaqueline Pech; Avila, Miguel Cohuo (1 February 2018). "Comparative study of restoration tools by cloning using LSP method" (PDF). Revista Ingeniantes (in English and Spanish). 5 (1): 53–59. ISSN 2395-9452. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 January 2022. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Sun, Ceasar; Shiau, Steven; Wang, Jazz; Tsai, Thomas (2012). Clonezilla: a next generation clone solution for cloud (PDF). Proceedings of the Oral presented at Open Source Conference Tokyo. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 August 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  5. ^ a b c d e Shiau, Steven J. H.; Sun, Chen-Kai; Tsai, Yu-Chin; Juang, Jer-Nan; Huang, Chi-Yo (12 June 2018). "The Design and Implementation of a Novel Open Source Massive Deployment System". Applied Sciences. 8 (6). MDPI: 965. doi:10.3390/app8060965. ISSN 2076-3417. OCLC 828808191.
  6. ^ Smith, Jesse (27 March 2010). "Disk Imaging with Clonezilla". OSNews. Archived from the original on 14 April 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  7. ^ Wallen, Jack (10 March 2010). "Review: Clonezilla system imaging". TechRepublic. Archived from the original on 23 March 2020. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  8. ^ Germain, Jack M. (28 December 2011). "Clonezilla: A Drive-Duping Monster With a Fearsome Face". LinuxInsider. Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  9. ^ Sharma, Mayank (2 July 2007). "Manage partitions and disks with GParted-Clonezilla live CD". Linux.com. Archived from the original on 12 April 2021. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  10. ^ a b Achmad, Arrosyidi; Edo Yonatan, Koentjoro (3 June 2018). The Comparation of The Duration of Five Software to Restore The Operating System (PDF). International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITAS). Surabaya, Indonesia: Institut Bisnis dan Informatika Stikom Surabaya. pp. 91–93. Archived from the original on 17 January 2022. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  11. ^ "DriveDroid - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Archived from the original on 2021-11-21. Retrieved 2020-11-26. DriveDroid allows you to boot your PC from ISO/IMG files stored on your phone. This is ideal for trying Linux distributions or always having a rescue-system on the go... without the need to burn different CDs or USB pendrives.
  12. ^ "Use DriveDroid to install any Linux Distro from Android". Make Tech Easier. 2015-09-03. Archived from the original on 2015-09-05. Retrieved 2020-11-26. DriveDroid is an Android application that allows you to boot into a number of Linux distributions on your computer from their ISO/IMG files stored on your device. This enables you to create an emergency rescue disk on your smartphone or try out different Linux distributions instead of using many different USB pendrives or CDs.
  13. ^ "What are the compression options in Clonezilla? What are the differences?". Clonezilla.org. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
  14. ^ "Print all this session - Save disk image : Save 1st disk (sda) as an image on 2nd disk (sdb) (Step by step)". Clonezilla.org. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
  15. ^ a b Nugroho, Andi; Yuliadi, Boy (1 March 2020). "Effectiveness of the Application Clonezilla to Clone Image with Ubuntu Server 12.04 and Samba Server" (PDF). International Journal of Open Information Technologies. 8 (3): 26–32. ISSN 2307-8162. OCLC 859597845. Archived from the original on 21 July 2020. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  16. ^ Gautam, Bishnu Prasad; Paudel, Dambar Raj (31 March 2012). "A NETWORK LAB EXPERIMENT OF MULTI-CLONING OF OS BY USING CLONEZILLA". 稚内北星学園大学紀要 稚内北星学園大学紀要 [Bulletin of Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University] (in Japanese and English) (12). Wakkanai Hokusei Gakuen University: 51–58. ISSN 1347-7900. OCLC 1058882775.
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