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Clonezilla

Clonezilla is a free, open-source tool for disk imaging and cloning, ideal for backing up data from a failing drive before it fails completely. It can create an image of the entire drive or clone it to another drive, and it intelligently handles bad sectors to maximize data recovery.

Information

Clonezilla is best run from a bootable live media, so you will need to create a bootable USB or CD/DVD with Clonezilla to use it.

Alternatively, you may utilize the rTS Debian live media created in this guide which already comes with Clonezilla pre-installed.

How to install Clonezilla

Refer below for installation instructions if you are not using our live image or want to install it on your own system.

Installing Clonezilla

Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint:

Terminal window
sudo apt update && sudo apt install clonezilla

Fedora / RHEL / CentOS / AlmaLinux: Clonezilla is not available in the default repositories for these distros, so you will need to add the external repository:

Terminal window
sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core
sudo dnf copr enable sergiomb/clonezilla
sudo dnf install clonezilla

Arch / Manjaro / CachyOS:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -Syu clonezilla

Using Clonezilla

Section titled “Using Clonezilla”

Run sudo clonezilla to launch the text-based menu. Choose “device-device” for direct disk/partition cloning (e.g., failing drive to healthy one) or “device-image” for imaging.

Clonezilla Main Menu

It is recommended you select beginner mode if you have not used Clonezilla before, identify drives carefully with labels or lsblk, and use “-rescue” for bad sectors on failing drives. Images save to a mounted target directory; restore similarly.

Identifying source and destination

Section titled “Identifying source and destination”

Before running Clonezilla, you must know the correct device names for the source (failing drive) and destination (healthy drive or image file). Refer to our guide on how to identify failing drives in Linux for detailed instructions on listing and identifying your drives.

Limitations of Clonezilla and when to use other tools

Section titled “Limitations of Clonezilla and when to use other tools”

The installed Clonezilla frontend cannot clone mounted or running system partitions reliably—unmount them first or use Live mode. Risk overwriting wrong drives; always verify source/target twice.

Important

For failing drives, expect partial reads; supplement with ddrescue if needed. Clonezilla is not suitable for network/PXE cloning (use DRBL/Clonezilla SE for that).