Imagine losing all your photos, documents, and work files instantly. It’s a nightmare scenario, but it can be prevented with a simple solution: disk cloning. This backup method creates an exact copy of your storage drive, allowing for faster recovery in case of failure and easy migration to a new drive.
In this post, we’ll explore the top Windows disk cloning software in 2024, giving you the tools to protect your valuable data and sleep soundly at night. Read on to find the perfect solution for your needs and discover the pros and cons of disk cloning before you make your decision.
Uranium Backup
Uranium Backup is a secure, complete, easy to use, but at the same time powerful and versatile backup software for personal data (photos, videos, documents) and business data on Windows.
It is available both in free and paid versions.
The free version is great for file and folder backups, and also supports scheduled copies with the native “backup scheduler” tool.
The paid versions add several advanced options for professionals and companies, such as backups of disk images, databases, and virtual machines. Uranium Backup can make copies on any kind of destination, such as hard drives, NAS, tapes, FTP servers, and Cloud.
The protection is very good in both the free and paid versions, the latter of which also includes disaster recovery tools. Prices are more than competitive: each plan grants a lifetime license starting at €80 (support and updates are included).
Iperius Backup
Iperius Backup provides solutions for various situations, including cloning Windows hard drives to any destination according to the user’s needs. This allows you to create BitLocker-compatible disk clones in addition to full operating system backups. The process also retains the logical partition structure of the drives, allowing the restore of a system as a Hyper-V virtual machine.
Users can configure Iperius Backup to automatically backup to FTP servers, S3-compatible storage (Amazon S3, Wasabi, Minio, etc.), mass storage devices (USB drives, external HDDs, etc.), or cloud storage services (Dropbox, OneDrive, Azure, IBM Cloud, Google Drive, etc.).
Iperius Backup helps save storage and time by using incremental backups, which means uploading the changes since the last backup without a full disk copy every time.
Moreover, users can schedule backups, decide to receive emails and be notified about the operation’s result in case of success, error, or any predefined conditions.
Iperius Backup supports both the restoration of individual files and the bare-metal restoration of servers for disaster recovery or migrating systems to entirely different machines with dissimilar hardware.
The best part is that you can download free Iperius Backup and upgrade to a more feature-rich, one-time paid license to keep using Iperius Backup indefinitely without getting yourself into subscriptions. One standout feature of the paid plans is the integration with the Iperius console, which allows remote management (including backups) of servers and PCs.
Notably, Iperius Backup extends beyond Microsoft 365 disk cloning/backup to cover cloud services, databases, virtual machines, and more.
EaseUS Todo Backup
If you want both a backup tool and a cloning tool, then EaseUS Todo Backup is worth buying.
It actually has a solid free version as well, but unfortunately, it’s only limited to creating backup images; you can’t clone a storage drive with it. However, the paid version does a great of cloning and lets you clone the OS, a partition, or the whole disk. It has dedicated options to move the system drive to a new storage drive and boot there, which is great if you need to move OS from HDD to SSD.
You can also clone your current OS to create a bootable USB drive and use your system from anywhere. Other than cloning, its backup solutions are also quite comprehensive. You can create file backups or whole system image backups and encrypt the data for protection. The backups can be saved online and offline in the same storage drive, external drive, FTP server, NAS, or cloud storage.
The software also comes with a very functional 30-day free trial version that offers most of the premium features but with a slower backup/restore speed.
AOMEI Backupper
AOMEI Backupper also offers a reliable free version that can handle both backups and cloning. As far as cloning is concerned, you can either create a full disk clone or partition clone in the free version. For creating the operating system clone, you’ll have to upgrade to the pro version.
The free version also contains almost all the required backup and restore features. You can create system backup, partition backup, file backup, incremental/differential backup, sector-by-sector backup, and much more.
Most other pro version features don’t affect cloning functionality, so the free version should be good if you don’t need to clone the operating system only. However, if you want more control over backup images, then the pro version lets you split/merge backups, real-time sync data, mirror sync, create event-triggered backups, filter file types, encrypt backup images, and backup/restore dynamic disks.
I really liked that AOMEI Backupper also offers customer support (working days only) even for their free version, which is rare to see for other software.
Clonezilla
I will not say it’s the best cloning software on this list, but it’s definitely the most comprehensive cloning software that you can get for free.
Clonezilla is an open-source cloning software that comes with two versions, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE. Clonezilla live is for the home users to clone to a single storage drive, and Clonezilla SE is for enterprises to clone up to 40 computers simultaneously.
The software supports almost all file systems, making it possible to clone Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and even Chrome OS. It is also not limited by partition type, so you can clone MBR or GPT partition using legacy BIOS or UEFI. The data can be secured with AES-256 encryption if needed.
Its interface might not be very intuitive, but if you only need to clone a single drive, the process is simple. Although cloning to multiple computers or using multicast can be a bit difficult for novice users.
Paragon Drive Copy
Paragon Drive Copy lets you create either a full drive clone, partition clone, or simply an operating system clone. This tool is actually just a tiny feature of the main Paragon Hard Disk Manager. Fortunately, it is available as a standalone purchasable software at half the price, so you won’t have to buy the full software if you only need the cloning functionality.
Drive Copy gives you complete control over which data you would like to clone and which to leave. It works on both MBT and GPT partitions and comes with some basic partitioning features to perform basic tasks like merging or splitting partitions.
Macrium Reflect
Macrium Reflect is very comprehensive and user-friendly, making it suitable for new users of cloning. It allows users to schedule backups using different schedule templates.
While Macrium Reflect offers a 30-day free trial, you need to opt for a subscription or a one-time purchase (they usually offer big discounts) to explore its full features, such as creating backup images or full-disk clones.
With the paid version of Macrium Reflect, users get access to their Rapid Delta Cloning technology. This makes it possible to use the differential backup method on a cloned storage, which is impossible to do with other software.
Therefore, if you need to update the cloned storage drive, then Macrium Reflect will only update new changes instead of creating a completely new clone. However, both storage drives must have an NTFS file system for this feature to work. The paid version lets users encrypt backup data and is a decent measure for ransomware prevention.
Now that you know about the different disk cloning software let’s see how disk cloning can be useful for you.
Why Clone Your Storage Drive?
Cloning the storage drive is mainly used for two purposes, to have an exact backup of data or migrate to a new storage drive. If anything ever happens to the data in your first drive, you can boot from the other drive and continue as if nothing happened.
As for cloning, a storage drive creates an exact copy of the drive; you can use it to migrate to a different drive. For example, if you have a slow HDD and want to upgrade to an SSD, then cloning software will make it a snap to move everything from your HDD to SSD.
Pros
- Cloning makes it easier and faster to move to the backup storage as you don’t need to reinstall OS or configure settings.
- You can install the same operating system with custom data and configuration on multiple computers by cloning multiple storage devices.
- Data of multiple computers can be easily managed and quickly restored in case of any corruption.
- The cloning software doesn’t need to be installed on the other storage drive to use the backup.
Cons
- As it creates an exact copy of the storage drive, cloning takes more space than other backup solutions.
- You must have another storage drive to backup data; you can’t make backups on the same drive.
- Full cloning must be done to update any new changes (in most cases); differential or incremental backup isn’t possible.
Based on the pros and cons I’ve listed here, you can decide whether cloning is a good option for you or not. Although, I’d recommend cloning your disk every once in a while just to ensure that you also have a backup copy of your computer’s data.
Ending Thoughts
If you are not versed with the disk cloning process, I recommend you give AOMEI Backupper, or Macrium Reflect a try. Both have reliable free versions with a user-friendly interface, making the cloning process easy for you. However, Clonezilla is your best bet if you want comprehensive cloning software, whether free or paid.