Best Hard Disk Cloning Software For Mac

Easeus is a free disk cloning software that lets you clone your drives, floppy disks, and USBs. In its free version, it provides all System/file/disk back-up & recovery Disk clone. For more features, one has to upgrade to its paid versions. It is one of the best software in the Disk cloning category.

Disk cloning software is an important need when it comes to data disaster prevention. Disk cloning is a method to create one on one copy of all your hard drive content, including files required to boot to the OS from the drive. In simple words, you can say, it is a duplicate copy of your hard drive.

You can’t prevent hard drive failure or other mechanical failure but sure can avoid losing your precious data by creating a clone of your disk. Well, it also comes handy when you want to upgrade your HDD to an SSD, as it becomes easier to get your data on the new drive.

There are a lot of disk cloning software & disk imaging software available to fulfill the task, but choosing the best for you could be troublesome. To help you with that, we have listed some of the best disk cloning software available for Windows 10, 8 and 7.

Our Top 3 Choices

EaseUS Todo Backup

  • Comes with Incremental, Differential and Full backup
  • Store backup anywhere you like
  • Allows you for migration and cloning

Best choice

Paragon Drive Copy

  • Seamless data migration from one PC to another
  • Create backups, and manage partitions with ease
  • Comes with one-click cloning

Best choice

Acronis True Image

  • Access Data backup anywhere via the cloud.
  • Supports various file systems
  • Available for free

Best choice

Best Disk Cloning And Disk Imaging Software For Windows PC

1. EaseUS Todo Backup Home: Reliable Hard Drive Cloning Tool

EaseUS Todo Backup is a disk cloning tool which is known to be trustworthy when it comes to creating a backup and restoring data on a Windows PC. It comes with three backup options, such as full, differential, and incremental backup.

Features Of EaseUS Todo Backup:

  • Enables you to run an automated backup on your files and directories, compress file images to save disk space.
  • Allows you to create a bootable backup so that you can restore your system whenever it crashes.
  • Store backups to a hard drive, tape, an external device, CD/DVD, FTP server, NAS, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive.
  • Comes with Smart Backup feature, which allows you to perform backup every half an hour, if any changes are made to data.
Pros:
Cloud backup available
Cons:
Low speed while image creation

2. Paragon Drive Copy: One Stop Solution for Disk Cloning

Another great hard drive cloning software, Paragon Drive Copy, can seamlessly migrate your data from a given source to the target. This disk imaging tool allows you to clone your operating system to a USB drive and use anywhere you like.

Features Of Paragon Drive Copy Professional:

  • Easily migrates your OS to a new PC for a seamless transition.
  • Allows you to create backups, migrate data, and manage partitions.
  • Let’s you copy or retrieve data to a hard drive even with different sector size.
  • Can split or merge partitions and distribute free hard disk space again.
Pros:
Intuitive interface
Cons:
No incremental backup

3. Acronis True Image: Best Mirroring Software For Windows 10

Looking for the best disk cloning software which can provide safety, privacy and security of your data? Well, your search ends here! Acronis True Image is a robust tool which can handle mirroring and disk cloning with ease.

Features Of Acronis True Image:

  • Provides access to your data and backup files anywhere via cloud backup. You can manage your data remotely.
  • Comes with a backup solution with AI to protect your computer from ransomware and crypto-jacking in real-time.
  • Provides dual protection as it backups your data both on cloud and locally so that you can access your data offsite as well.
  • Allows you to store your data, locally on an external hard drive, NAS device, network folder, offsite in the cloud and more.
Pros:
Non-stop backups
Cons:
Expensive

4. CloneZilla: Best Free Disk Imaging Software

Clonezilla is a disk imaging tool that works as a disk cloning tool as well. It claims to help in system deployment, system backup and recovery. Clonezilla comes in three different versions, Clonezilla live (single computer), Clonezilla SE(for servers), Clonezilla lite server (more than 40 computers).

Features Of Clonezilla:

  • Supports many file systems, including ext2, ext4, ext3, reiserf4, reiserfs, jfs, xfs, nilfs2, FAT12, FAT16, NTFS, FAT32 and more.
  • The tool works for Windows, macOS, Linux and more and is available for free and open-source.
  • It saves and retrieves the used portion of the hard disk, thereby increasing clone efficiency.
  • Allows you to save the image file on ssh server, local disk, samba server, WedDAV server, and NFS server.
Pros:
Open-source software
Cons:
No online cloning/ imaging available

5. Macrium Reflect: Free Cloning Software For Windows 10

Macrium Reflect free disk imaging and cloning tool is great for both personal and professional use. The tool provides you with options for incremental backups to ensure your data is protected. This version of the tool is available for free and enables you to create effective backups.

Features Of Macrium Reflect Free:

  • Can perform disk cloning, create, and backup disk images.
  • Boots your backups in a Hyper-V VM at once
  • Provides 30 days of technical support via email.
  • Allows you to create images of running Windows and browse backup files in Explorer.
Pros:
Provides scheduling feature
Cons:
No incremental backup

6. MiniTool Partition Wizard: Best Free Partition Manager

MiniTool Partition Wizard, a free disk imaging tool which comes with other features, such as data backup, data recovery, disk partitioning, Disk Benchmark and more. It allows you to check file systems, migrate your OS to SSD, and convert MBR to GPT.

Features Of MiniTool Partition Wizard Free:

  • Let’s you clone or copy your hard disk in a manner that if your target drive is larger than the source, then it automatically resizes Windows partition.
  • Comes with three backup schemes, incremental, full and differential.
  • Allows you to restore the system to the previous state.
  • Clone your original disk to any other drive such as SSD on the same computer.
Pros:
Only available on Windows
Cons:
Not available for mobile, Mac

7. Active @ Disk Image: Best Disk Duplicator Software

Active Disk Image is a disk imaging tool which can make an exact copy of your hard drive, be it SSD, HDD, USB, CD, Blu-ray, and more. You can use disk images for backups, disk duplication, and PC upgrades.

Features Of Active@ Disk Image:

  • Allows you to schedule backup.
  • Enables you to create or restore a disk image backup.
  • Provides Windows servers support.
  • Comes with image compression (fast, high and normal)
Pros:
Includes task scheduler
Cons:
Not fit for novice users

8. AOMEI Backupper Standard: Free & Smart Cloning Software For All

Another great way to clone a hard disk is downloading AOMEI Backupper Standard. It is a free tool which makes sure your data is safe. The disk cloning tool also comes with a disaster recovery solution for laptops and computers.

Features OF AOMEI Backupper Standard:

  • Provides three different backups, differential, full and incremental, to make creating backup easy.
  • Comes with real-time file and folder sync from source to destination without any hassle.
  • Allows you to scan HDD to HDD, HDD to SSD, and SSD to SSD for data migration and disk upgrades.
  • Supports both 32, & 64-bit Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Windows 10.
CloningPros:
A simple interface makes it easy for anyone to use the tool
Cons:
Not available for other platforms

9. Acronis Disk Director: A MultiPurpose Tool To Prevent Data Disasters

Acronis Disk Director is one of the best disk cloning software which can help you clone your hard disk, protect & manage your data, and hard disk. This cloning software can swiftly create partitions, resize, merge, move them without the fear of data loss.

Features Of Acronis Disk Director:

  • Allows you to map hard disks, create partitions in no time.
  • Comes with a disk editing feature, under which you can make changes to your disk drive content to recover deleted/missing information.
  • Can replace an old hard disk to a new one, without reinstalling OS, apps and other settings.
  • Supports Windows Server 2016, latest operating systems and 4K hard drives
Pros:
Works smoothly on PCs
Cons:
Not pocket friendly

10. O & O DiskImage 15: Advanced Disk Cloner

O&O Diskimage 15 is one of the great tools to choose to clone your hard disk as it can back up all your files into a single file anywhere you want, even when you are working on your computer. If you lose your data, then this disk cloning tool can help you recover your data seamlessly.

Features Of O&O DiskImage 15:

  • Comes with support for SSD hard drives and the latest UEFI system.
  • Allows you to create a system restore, clone or duplicate your hard drive.
  • Provides a facility to restore a backup onto a computer with different hardware from the source.
  • Comes with both automatic and manual backup options
Pros:
A simple interface so that novice and advanced users can use the tool
Cons:
Image of used sectors feature missing from the free version
Free version doesn’t have support for Windows 2008, 2008 R2, Server 2016, Server 2012, and more.

11. NovaBackup PC: All-Rounder Backup Tool

NovaBackup PC is robust disk imaging software which ensures protection for your data. The tool promises multiple File and Image Backup options such as Differential, Full, and Incremental. With Boot Disk, it allows you to restore Image Backup, at the time of system failure to get back to the previous state when Image Backup was created.

Features Of NovaBackup

  • Comes with two backup options, file and image backup. File backup enables you to backup specific files, but image backup is to backup complete hard disk.
  • Allows you to restore a single file, which was included in the backup file.
  • Provides an option to schedule backup so that you don’t have to be bothered for the same.
  • Supports NTFS format drives connected to the hard drive and comes with AES 256-bit, AES 192-bit, and AES 128-bit encryption.
Pros:
Decent speed and software is safe and stable to use
Doesn’t require all full attention, the smart tool can handle it all.
Cons:
Image-based DR could be worked on

12. Drive Image XML: A Free Private Edition For Disk Cloning

Another disk cloning tool, Drive Image XML which is available for free, allows you to create an image and backup of your PC’s partitions and drives. This cloning tool can help you create or restore images to both similar and different drives.

Features Of DriveImage XML

  • Allows you toschedule backups so that your data is always secure.
  • A simple and trustworthy tool to create images and backup of your hard disk.
  • The tool uses Microsoft Volume Shadow Services to create safe “hot images” even while working on your computer.
  • Provides you with an option to copy drive to drive directly.
Pros:
Simple, easy to use and reliable
Cons:
Doesn’t come with recovery media option

13. Hard Disk Manager 16: Best Tool To Maintain Disk Health

Hard Disk Manager 16 is another disk mirroring software that comes with an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy to use for all. You can maintain your hard disk, keep control on storage space and performance of your computer.

Features Of Hard Disk Manager 16:

  • Allows you to transfer data from one computer to another in a few seconds.
  • This tool to clone your hard disk is free and comes in protected mode, which means you can preview the changes and apply them if you want.
  • Use the basic partitioning feature to maintain your system’s health.
  • Provides an option to restore your data in the event of any malware infection.
Pros:
Provides an option of continuous backup
Cons:
Can be used by only one person

14. Daemon Tools Pro 8: A Powerful Disk Imaging Software

Looking for a disk mounting tool which can mount all forms of images from explorer or app? If yes, then the answer is Daemon Tools Pro. This drive cloning software is a powerful emulation tool that can get images from physical discs using advanced parameters.

Features Of Daemon Tools Pro 8:

  • Comes with TrueCrypt containers to keep confidential information. Allows you to create dynamic and fixed virtual hard disks.
  • Compress, convert, and protect your files by using a password.
  • Has an ability to emulate all 32 DT, HD and SCSI with 4IDE devices.
  • Comes with Advanced imaging tools to create new and edit old Audio CD and data images.
Pros:
Simple and attractive
Cons:
Updates are heavy

15. Symantec Ghost Solution Suite: An Enterprise Solution For Hard Disk Cloning

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite is a great tool to create images, deploy desktops, tablets, laptops, and servers. It is easy to migrate the latest OS, deploy software across hardware as well as OS and do custom configurations.

How to partition a hard drive. Paragon Hard Disk Manager for Mac is a system and data management solution for Apple computers. It provides powerful backup and flexible recovery features, everything you need for perfect partitioning, and reliable data wiping algorithms.

Features Of Symantec Ghost Solution Suite:

  • With a simple interface, the tool is fast, easy to use and reliable.
  • Saves settings configuration in the image, saving hours of manual configuration.
  • Allows you to build an image library which can be used for servers, and workstation.
  • Can clone a hard disk along with image deployment.
Pros:
Configuration settings are saved in the image.
Cons:
Needs manual configuration after the image is completed.

So, these are some of the best disk cloning software to create a disk image or a clone so that you never lose your data ever. What do you think of this post? Please let us know what you think about it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is The Difference Between Disk Imaging & Disk Cloning?

Disk Imaging and Disk Cloning are two different terms, however, are often used interchangeably as they are used for the same thing, i.e. Copy hard drive’s content. Disk Cloning is a process of creating one to one copy of the hard drive, including information that helps to boot the operating system. However, disk imaging creates a hard drive’s archive that can be then used to create a one-to-one copy.

What Is The Best Free Cloning Software For Windows 10?

If you are looking for the best free cloning software for Windows 10, then you can use Clonezilla, a disk cloning program which can be used for system deployment, and recovery. Another disk cloning software that comes for free is AOMEI Backupper, which can easily backup, sync, restore, clone your Windows system.

Is It Better To Clone Or Image A Hard Drive?

It is better to clone a drive as it will create a one-to-one copy of your hard drive, including files that are needed to boot to the OS from the drive. Disk imaging creates copies of everything present on the drive into a compressed file (large file).

Does Cloning A Drive Make It Bootable?

Best Hard Drive Cloning Software For Mac

You need to get a disk cloning tool to clone the hard drive so you can backup and upgrade your disk. If you use the software to clone a live hard disk, the target disk is bootable. You can install any of the mentioned freemium software from the list to try and make a bootable disk.

How Do I Clone A Disk For Free?

You can use any of the freemium products mentioned in the list. Our personal favorite is CloneZilla, you can install the tool and clone your hard drive with ease.

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Responses

Hard drive cloning is a process of creating 1 to 1 copy of the content of hard drive or solid-state drive. The contents are saved as a disk image file and can be transferred to storage devices like DVD, hard drive, or USB drive. In case, if your original hard drive fails, you can quickly swap it with the clone. This helps you to avoid reinstalling system software.

Following is a handpicked list of Top Hard Drive Cloning Tools, with its popular features and website links. The list contains both open source(free) and commercial(paid) software.

1) Acronis

Acronis replicates a computer's operating system, software, patches, and drives. It allows you to duplicate the configurations of multiple PC so that each system is identically set up.

Features:

  • It provides a complete image of your PC at a single point in time.
  • This software defines when, what, and where to backup your important data.
  • Acronis secures your important using the stringent security.
  • It offers the easiest way to backup your data and clone disk.

2) EaseUS Todo Backup

EaseUS Todo Backup software product allows you to clone a smaller hard disk drive to a larger hard disk drive. It also allows you to clone HDD to SSD for increasing performance.

Features:

  • It allows you to clone MBR (Master Boot Record) disk to GPT (GUID Partition Table) disk or GPT disk to MBR disk from your small size disk to large size disk.
  • Clone one partition or multiple partitions instead of the whole disk to avoid the loss of your data.
  • This software product helps you to recover deleted data or backup your system.
  • You can restore files, system, partition, or disk.

3) AOMEI Backupper

AOMEI Backupper app enables you to transfer your operating system to another drive without installing it again. This software helps you to upgrade your hard from old disk to a new one.

Features:

  • You can clone one disk to another without a disturbing operating system.
  • Clone data sector by sector.
  • It supports GPT (GUID Partition Table) and MBR (Master Boot Record) partition styles.
  • Clone HDD (Hard Disk Drive) to HDD, HDD to SSD (Solid-State Drive), or SSD to SSD for disk upgrades and data migration.
  • Services are available for Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows, etc.
  • It allows you to access your important files on your tablet, mobile phone, or laptop with your cloud network account.

4) MiniTool Partition Wizard

MiniTool Partition Wizard helps you to manage disks partitions and check the file system. This tool measures the read and writes speed under disk access scenarios like random or sequential.

Features:

  • This software helps you to check which file is taking too much disk space.
  • It allows you to move or resize the partition.
  • You can migrate the operating system to SSD.
  • It enables you to convert NTFS (New Technology File System) to FAT File Allocation Table).
  • MiniTool Partition Wizard allows you to recover partition and data.

Download Link:https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

5) Active@ Disk Image

Active@ Disk Image is a handy hard disk image software that helps you to t creates a similar copy of, SSD, USB, HDD, Blu-ray, etc. and stores it into a folder. This software can be used for PC upgrades, disk duplication or backups, purposes.

Features:

  • It supports Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 Vista, Server 2003, and 2012.
  • You can mount any image as a virtual drive.
  • This tool provides image compression.
  • A copy of disk partition or hard drives contains only occupied sectors.
  • It offers to image and restore fixed hard disks, and solid-state drives, and removable disks.
  • You can verify the image after creating it.

Download Link:https://www.disk-image.com/index.html

6) Macrium Reflect 7

Macrium Reflect 7 provides a backup, disk imaging and cloning solution for commercial as well as personal use. It offers direct disk cloning and a secure way to store your commercial and personal data. You can backup data to local, USB, and networked drives.

Features:

  • It increases the disk space of your computer by rapid delta cloning.
  • Create images of a live/running Windows OS.
  • You can boost your backup in Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines.
  • This software encrypts your backups.
  • Schedule your backup with flexible templates.
  • It provides rapid data cloning and restores for fast DR.

Download Link:https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

7) Paragon Drive Copy

Paragon Drive Copy Professional allows you to migrate disk to a larger drive. It also allows you to manage hard disk partitions effectively.

Features:

  • Users can keep your disk properly organized.
  • This tool enables users to clone their OS to a USB flash drive and use it.
  • Copy or restore files to a hard disk with various sector sizes.
  • It allows the user to perform partitioning operations to keep disks properly organized.
  • This tool has a built-in wizard that restores various types of images.

8) O&O

O&O DiskImage allows you to restore the system and to duplicate or clone hard drive or PC. It supports Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows.

Features:

  • It is easy to restore files, folders, drives, and disk.
  • This software allows you to boost the system with driver integration.
  • It has enhanced functions to control via Command Lines.
  • You can directly create virtual hard disks.
  • This tool provides monitoring and warning of security risks.
  • You can adjust the selected DPI setting of a connected monitor.

9) Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a disk imaging or cloning program. It helps you to clone GNU/Linux, Intel-based Mac OS, MS windows, and FreeBSD.

Features:

  • You can restore one image to multiple local devices.
  • It allows you to restore multiple local devices.
  • This tool supports multicasting.
  • It provides AES-256 encryption to safeguard data access, storage, and transfer.
  • This tool offers BMR and GPT partition formats of a hard disk.
  • You can customize your imaging and cloning.

Download Link:https://clonezilla.org/

10) R-Drive Image

R-Drive is a software which provides disk image files creation for duplication and backup process. It contains the exact copy of a hard drive, logical disk, and partition.

Features:

  • You can store drive image files in removable media such as Iomega Zip, Jazz disks, CD-R(W)/DVD, etc.
  • It creates images without restarting your windows system.
  • The tool can restore images onto their new disks, original disks, hard drive's free space, or partitions.
  • Clone disk by copying data from source disk to the target one.
  • It can connect its image files as read-only virtual drives.
  • This tool has a multi-language user interface.

Download Link:https://www.drive-image.com/

11) Driveimage XML

Driveimage XML is another effective software for imaging and backing up the partition and logical drives. It enables you to store images in XML files and process them with 3rd party software.

Features:

  • You can copy directly from one hard disk to another one.
  • This tool lets you browse images, view, and extract files.
  • You can run DriveImage from runtime WinPE boot CD-ROM or live CD.
  • This tool provides scheduling automatic backups.
  • It helps you to restore images to the same or a different drive.

Epsom software fx-890 for mac free. Download Link:https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

FAQ

💻 What is Hard Drive Cloning?

Hard drive cloning is a process of creating 1 to 1 copy of the content of hard drive or solid-state drive for backup purposes

🖥️ How long does Hard Drive Cloning take?

Cloning speed is a function of 2 parameters

  1. Amount to data to be transferred
  2. SSD or Hard Drive Data transfer speed

Do note that a Hard Disk Manufacture like Western Digital may claim a transfer rate of 200MBps, but in the real-world, you may achieve only half of that speed.