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.
Popularity: 30%
For myself, I’m willing to spend a little time to further the goal of seeing opensource on the desktop. And I’m excited to report that I’m almost there!
I had been 
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