My question today is ‘What are the open source/free alternatives to disk/partition cloning tools like Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image or Paragon Drive Backup.”
The selection has certainly improved and matured since I research this topic more than 2 years ago. Back then a few alternatives (including SystemRescueCD and PartD, Partition Saving) was tested but none gives the comfort that the restore would be fail-proof should the need suddenly appears. The main problem I remembered was NTFS wasn’t well supported at that time. In the end I stuck to Norton Ghost.
Now it is time to return to this topic after installing 2 PCs in 2 days and potentially having to provision 100 more PCs to come.
Let me list the alternatives and I will get back with the result in a few days. In the meantime, if you have any experience, good or bad, with open source/free disk clone utilities, please leave a comment.
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UBCD – Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
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FOG – Free, Ghost-like Cloning Solution
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PING – Partimage is Not Ghost
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Linux Rescue Server – this one is interesting from an overall system management point of view.
Wikipedia has a good article to learn more about disk cloning.
Hi Ken,
Found you by accident. Love the posts so far. I’ll be mentioning your blog tomorrow in my weekly newsletter.
http://freewarewiki.com/NewsLetters
Here’s a preview:
http://freewarewiki.com/AlternativeDiskPartitionCloningTools
Keep up the great work and let me know immediately if you need any changes.
Clif
Thanks Clif!