30 LXF249May 2019 2228May 019Clon8e9l
roundup Disk cloning tools
nlikedesktopapps,disk
cloningtoolsareadministrative
softwareandyou’dexpect
themtosacrificeacertainamountof
user-friendlinessinordertomakeroom
foradvancedfunctionsandfeatures.
Thatbeingsaid,whilewedon’texpect
thesetoolstohavepoint-and-click
usability,acertainamountof
intuitivenesswillsurelymakethem
moreapproachable.
Weareinnowayexpectingthese
toolstocatertoanon-technical
audiencethatdoesn’tknowwhatthey
aregettinginto,buthavingalogically
laid-outinterfacewithaclearpathof
progressionwillgoalongwaytogetting
themostoutofthetools.Easeof
deploymentandreasonabledefaults
aretheicingonthecake,andwhilethey
aren’tallthatcriticaltoselectingagood
administrativetool,theycan’treally
hurtitschances.
Clonezilla 8/10
Clonezillaisoneofthemost
recommendedtoolsonLinuxforumsfor
imaginganolddisktoabigger,newdisk
thankstoitsncurses-basedfrontend,
whichisintuitive(Really?–Ed)tonavigate.
Inthebackground,Clonezillausesasetof
scriptswithseveralopensourcedisk
utilitiessuchasPartimage,ntfsclone,
Partcloneandddtohelpyouduplicate
individualpartitionsandcompletedisks.
Themenusoffersensibledefaultsso
you’lllikelygowiththerecommended
optionsmostofthetime.Justmakesure
thatthepartitiontobeclonedisn’t
mounted.Also,despiteitsunglamorous
text-basedinterface,Clonezillaisn’t
intimidatingbecauseofitsveryverbose
screens.Eachstepisdottedwithrelevant
informationtohelpyoumakeaninformed
choice.Still,Clonezillaisn’tsomethingto
beapproachedwithoutadequate
knowledgeandexperience.deepinClone 8/10
If there’s one area where Deepin Clone
trumps the rest of the competition, it’s
usability: the app really is as simple as
they come.
On the first screen, it asks you to select
whether you wish to clone a complete or
individual partitions. Depending on the
selection, it’ll bring up another set of
options to help you narrow down the disk/
partition you want.
On the following screen you’re shown a
list of disks or partitions. Unlike some of
the other options on test here, if you’ve
selected the option to clone partitions, the
app won’t let you clone multiple partitions
in one go. Also, its default mode of cloning
is a direct disk-to-disk or partition-to-
partition, which is rather unsafe and
something we’d never recommend doing.
In addition, to use Deepin Clone to image
the current installation, you’ll have to run
it via Deepin Recovery.Usability
What makes them
stand out?
VErdICT
lonezilla supports a wide number of filesystems, from
popular ones like ext2/3/4, ReiserFS4, Btrfs, FAT16/32
and NTFS to specialised ones like XFS, JFS and UFS.
Butthatdoesn’t mean it’s totally unusable for unsupported
filesystems. For those it supports, Clonezilla images only the
used blocks for greater restore functionality. If it runs into a
filesystem it doesn’t understand, Clonezilla uses dd to image the
contents as-is, and can restore these easily to equal-sized disks.
Much like Clonezilla, G4L works in two modes. There’s the
filesystem level where it uses utilities such as NTFSclone and
FSArchiver to directly clone supported filesystems, including
virtually all the popular ones. If you work with esoteric filesystems
or need to clone entire disks, you can use G4L in RAW mode to
copy all bits of any file system.
FOG Project uses both PartImage and PartClone in the
background, so it supports all the popular filesystems. The
Imaging section also enables you to create a sector-by-sector
image of the drive using dd.Supported filesystems
Will they work across all machines in yournetwork?
C
ClonEzIllA 9/10
dEEpInClonE 5/10
FoGprojECT 9/10G4l 9/10
WErESynC 5/10In contrast, there isn’t much information on the internet
about the way that Deepin Clone works, and it doesn’t offer any
configurable parameters that would hint at the filesystems it
supports. In our tests, however, it worked on both ext4 and NTFS
partitions.
In contrast to its peers, WereSync uses rsync to copy the
contents of the drive, and can image the contents of GPT, MBR
and LVM drives. According to the official documentation, you can
even force the tool to copy the contents of a drive to a file by
specifying the IMG extension type.All these tools give you decent mileage so long as you’re working with one of
the popular filesystems.u