Disk cloning is the process of copying data from a hard disk to another one, in fact, you can do this process by copy & paste but you wont be able to copy the hidden files and folders or the in-use files, that is why you need a cloning software to do the job, also you may need the cloning process to save a backup image from your files and folders.

Basically, the cloning software job is to take all disk data, convert them into a single .img file and give it to you, so you can copy it to another hard drive, and here we have the best Open Source Cloning software to do the job for you.

Clonezilla is a Live CD based on Ubuntu & Debian to clone all your hard drive data or to take a backup, licensed under GPL 3, it is similar to Norton Ghost on Windows but more effective.

• Support for many filesystems like ext2, ext3, ext4, btrfs, xfs, and many other filesystems.
• Support for BIOS and UEFI.
• Support for MPR and GPT partitions.
• Ability to reinstall grub 1 and 2 on any attached hard drive.
• Works on weak computers ( 200 MB of RAM is needed only).

Unlike other cloning software, Mondo Rescue doesnt convert your hard drivers into an .img file, but it will convert them into an .iso image, you can also create a custom Live CD with Mondo using “mindi” which is a special tool developed by Mondo Rescue to clone your data from the Live CD.

It supports most Linux distributions, it also supports FreeBSD, and it is licensed under GPL.

Partimage is an open-source software backup, by default it works under Linux system and available to install from the package manager for most Linux distributions, if you dont have a Linux system installed by default you can use SystemRescueCd which is a Live CD that include Partimage by default to do the cloning process that you want.

Partimage is very fast in cloning hard drivers, but the problem is that it doesnt support ext4 or btrfs partitions, although that you can use it to clone other filesystems like ext3 and NTFS.

FSArchiver is a continuation of Partimage, also a good tool to clone hard disks, it supports cloning Ext4 partitions and NTFS partitions.

• Support for basic file attributes like owner, permissions, etc.
• Support for extended attributes like those used by SELinux.
• Support the basic file­system attributes (label, UUID, block­size) for all Linux file­systems.
• Support for NTFS partitions of Windows and Ext of Linux and Unix­Like.
• Support for checksums which enables you to check for data corruption.
• Ability to restore corrupted archives by just skipping the corrupted file.
• Ability to have more than one filesystem in an archive.
• Ability to compress the archive in many formats like lzo, gzip, bzip2, lzma/xz.
• Ability to split big files in size to a smaller one.

Partclone is a free tool to clone & restore partitions, written in C in first appeared in 2007, it supports many filesystems like ext2, ext3, ext4, xfs, nfs, reiserfs, reiser4, hfs+, btrfs and it is very simple to use.

G4L is a free Live CD system to clone hard disk easily, its the main feature is that you can compress the filesystem, send it via FTP or CIFS or SSHFS or NFS to any location you want, it also supports GPT partitions.