One of the most annoying things about owning a computer is the maintenance. It’s easily neglected. After all you don’t really notice the slow decline of your system’s performance, do you?
But then again it’s a delight to work on a freshly installed machine, where everything is smooth and responds quickly. But customization is tedious. And when your hard drive decides to break spontaneously, time is something you won’t have for sure.
For emergencies it’s better you have a data and a system backup available. Here are the 5 best tools to clone or copy your hard drive in no particular order.
Paragon’s Drive Backup Express (Windows)
This software is the easy solution to clone your hard drive . It’s comfortable to use with a sleek interface that guides you through the whole process of backing up and restoring step by step. And while a backup is running in the background you can even proceed using your system.
Both Drive Backup Express and DriveImage XML (described below) require a bootable CD, which the user has to create independently.
I have previously written about Drive Backup Express and thoroughly explained how it works here.
DriveImage XML (Windows)
In contrast to Drive Backup Express, DriveImage XML is a visually very basic tool. However, it reliably creates images of logical drives and partitions and restores these to either the originating or a different hard disk.
Like Drive Backup Express, DriveImage XML applies a cloning technique that allows parallel use of the system while the backup is running. It can also do incremental backups, supplementing existing backups with what was changed in the meantime. Additionally, images can be restored without having to reboot.
CloneZilla (cross platform)
CloneZilla is an open source and cross platform tool to make a copy of a hard drive and also to restore them afterwards.
It’s a tough tool for non nerds as it requires some background knowledge. First of all it’s not a software you install on your computer. You download CloneZilla in form of an ISO image or ZIP file and burn the image to a CD or load the files onto a USB flash drive or hard drive.
The next step is to reboot the computer from that medium you created, which may require going into the BIOS and allow booting from a CD or USB device.
Once the tool is running, it’s easy to use the simple interface to initiate or restore a backup. There also is sort of a screenshot walkthrough on the CloneZilla homepage, where you can view some of the options before running the tool.
XXCLONE (Windows)
XXCLONE is Windows software. The tool can create a self-bootable clone of a Windows drive as well as full backups of non-system volumes. Basically, it can make a hard drive image.
The interface is basic and clear. When started, the tool scans for available volumes and you can then choose a source and target volume from these. A direct link to the Windows Disk Management is provided through the “diskmgmt” button. Under the “Tool Cools” tab you can make use of options such as making the target volume self-bootable, manage restore points or create a batch file to save your current settings for future re-use.
The download section of the website provides a thorough help file that contains screenshots and descriptions of all features.
EASEUS Disk Copy (cross platform)
EASEUS Disk Copy creates sector by sector clones of partitions or hard disks, independent of operating system, file systems or partition scheme. It’s a versatile tool for both the novice and experienced user.
Just like CoolZilla, it’s not installed locally, rather the ISO image is burned to a bootable CD or DVD.
The website is probably the best of all tools described here. The information is thorough and very clear, including a very detailed help section that will walk you through every aspect of the program.
Do you clone and copy your hard drive? If so, which program do you use? Can you recommend any particular program to us? Let us know in the comments.
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