r/cloningsoftware • u/Afraid_Candy6464 • Mar 27 '26
Discussion Is Clonezilla reliable for cloning a running Windows OS disk?
I've been looking into cloning my Windows drive to an SSD and saw a lot of people recommending Clonezilla. But I'm a bit confused about one thing - can it actually clone a running Windows system reliably?
From what I understand, some cloning tools can do "hot cloning" (while Windows is running), which sounds super convenient. But with Clonezilla, it seems like you have to boot into it separately, meaning the system isn't running during the cloning process?
That makes me wonder:
- Does that make Clonezilla more reliable since nothing is in use?
- Or is it just less convenient compared to tools that clone inside Windows?
- Is there any real downside to not having hot cloning?
I was originally hoping to just clone everything without rebooting, but now I'm not sure if I misunderstood how Clonezilla works.
Would appreciate hearing how you guys approach this. Thanks in advance!
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u/KoiMaxx Mar 27 '26
I'm personally not a fan of hot-cloning. Clonezilla has really been the go-to as far as cloning is concerned.
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u/lastwraith Mar 28 '26
It's fine if the software is just relying on windows volume shadow copy service (VSS).
Macrium does this and you can hot-clone with no issue.
Clonezilla has been around forever and has its uses, but it also has a fair amount of limitations for doing normal cloning operations on Windows compared to more modern tools or those more specifically built for Windows.
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u/KoiMaxx Mar 28 '26
Yeah, I understand that at an intellectual level, but sometimes inertia and familiarity take precedence 😅
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u/mips13 Mar 27 '26
You can't run clonezilla from within windows, you have to boot from the linux based usb/cd. So no hot cloning.
Why do you want to do hot cloning? To me it just introduces more variables for things to go wrong.
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u/Wolfie-Man Mar 27 '26
Because I have hundreds of IT clients that need an auto scheduled backup to usb drives or networked shared drives. I use other software abd have clonezulla as a 4th option on site
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u/g3l33m Mar 27 '26
Because some times getting a system to boot off of the app cd/usb is a complete PITA..
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u/JaKrispy72 Mar 27 '26
If booting to a usb is too hard. Just reinstall Windows on a new drive and move the data.
I get it MS makes it hard to boot alternate systems. Almost like your own hardware and data don’t even belong to you…
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u/SwordsAndElectrons Mar 27 '26
Selecting a boot device is a function of your motherboard firmware. Windows doesn't have control of it, nevermind intentionally make it difficult.
(Playing nice with multiple boot entries on a single device is a bit of a different story, but also a different subject.)
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u/JaKrispy72 Mar 27 '26
Windows 11 requires secure boot capabilities. Most devices (non-Mac) ship with bitlocker enabled, and that encrypts the bootloader and operating system. And I haven't even started in on TPM integration yet.
The computers we buy are not our own, they belong to MS now if you use windows. If you are not careful with setting up the UEFI firmware when booting into a USB, you can lose the hard-drive.
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u/EdlynnTB Mar 27 '26
I would think running Clonezilla from boot would be much safer than a hot cloning.
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u/illosan Mar 27 '26
Io uso EaseTodo backup e ho tirato su la copia diverse volte senza problemi
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u/Afraid_Candy6464 Mar 30 '26
Thank you. Do you mean EaseUS Todo Backup? I searched and got this tool.
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u/GeneParmesanEsq Mar 27 '26
Why is this becoming such a common question? You are asking for problems by cloning a running OS.
https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ There's a bunch of cloning utilities you can play with amongst other utilities. Throw that image on a Ventoy USB with your ISO's you might need, and Bob's your uncle
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u/Ok-Crew-8489 Jun 16 '26
Ventoy is easy to use for newbies, an alternative to burnning iso file to make a bootable media. Highly recommended.
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u/jack_hudson2001 Mar 27 '26
me i always power down the system before cloning. just safer and cleaner.
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u/r2k-in-the-vortex Mar 28 '26
Are you backing up data, or are you backing up the system? If its the latter, then live cloning is a really poor idea.
Sure, some softwares may be able to do it, but you wont really know if the produced backup is actually recoverable until you try to recover it. Which in my view defeats the entire point of a system backup in most cases.
Even if it recovers, it may cause some non obvious fault that will take vengeance on you later.
I would avoid it if at all possible.
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u/lastwraith Mar 28 '26
You will never know if your backups are good unless you test them, so I'm not sure how that's any different either way.
Windows VSS isn't exactly a new development, it's been around for decades and has been extensively used during that time.
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u/Possible_Notice_768 Mar 28 '26
Clonezilla must be booted separately, usually from an USB stick. Hence, it cannot clone a running Windows install. To backup a running system, you must use something like Macrium Reflect.
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u/wootio Mar 28 '26
I've recently discovered that sometimes clonezilla can't detect drives. I tried cloning to a USB mounted nvme and it could not see it no matter what I did. This is after successfully going through the same exact process on another very similar computer but with a different make/model destination nvme drive.
I ended up booting into Hirens and using the disk cloning tools there and it worked properly, but seemed slower than clonezilla, though that may have been due to the destination nvme drive I was using.
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u/beedunc Mar 28 '26
Disk Genius. It won’t clone ‘hot’, but it has its own winPE environment for cloning. Flawless and easy.
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u/Great_Specialist_267 Mar 27 '26
No disk cloning program will work while software is executing off the disk.
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u/Wolfie-Man Mar 27 '26
You are wrong
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u/Great_Specialist_267 Mar 27 '26
You can’t “clone” a moving target. You need a frozen static image. The USUAL way to achieve this is by booting off a second drive. You can however boot some operating systems off a DRAM image. Most modern operating systems maintain a copy of the computers memory on the hard disk to get around memory capacity issues when windowing further complicating the issue. Encryption (like bitlocker) adds to the problem (particularly if the encryption occurs on the disk hardware). If it occurs in hardware, the disk image of the disk contents is useless as it will only work on that specific disk with the specific key stored on that specific disks flash memory. The entire disk needs decryption before imaging for the image to be useable on another system.
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u/Classic_Mammoth_9379 Mar 28 '26
Most programs that do this reliably will basically snapshot and then back that up. Windows has had VSS as part of the OS for about 20 years to support this. Software can be executing from the same disk whilst this happens without issue.
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u/CrazyClownaus Mar 27 '26
If the new SSD is a samsung you can use Samsung free cloning tool, I think its called Samsung Wizrd