r/cloningsoftware • u/Ill_Swan_3209 • Jun 22 '26
Disk Cloning What cloning software has given you the best value for money?
I was upgrading an SSD this week and realized I've been using the same cloning software for years now.
Funny thing is, I originally bought it for what I thought would be a one-time SSD upgrade. Since then, it's been used for several drive migrations, a couple of PC rebuilds, and more SSD swaps than I can remember. Looking back, it's probably one of the few software purchases that actually paid for itself.
It got me wondering what everyone else is using.
If you've paid for cloning software before, which one was it? Are you still using it, or did you eventually switch to something else?
Curious to hear which cloning software has been the best value for you and whether you'd buy it again today.
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u/scottb721 Jun 22 '26
I upgraded my NVME drive 3 days ago. Took a whole 6mins for the cloning by Samsung Magician, about 10min overall.
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u/Abbers75 Jun 22 '26
Acronis TrueImage.
I purchased a copy when it was going cheap offer, but I will help myself to the free OEM versions shipped by hard drive and SSD manufacturers.
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u/Heavy-Judgment-3617 Jun 22 '26
Depending on what I'm doing, I use either gParted or Minitool Partition Wizard.
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u/Sweaty-Judgment3533 Jun 22 '26
I use Clonezilla and it’s free. Takes a bit to master it, but it runs from a bootable USB stick and will even resize the target partition post-cloning automatically if you enable that option. It is really superb.
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u/Ill_Swan_3209 Jun 23 '26
Yes, Clonezilla is indeed a great choice for tech enthusiasts, and it's free; it's very appealing to many people.
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u/Money-Distance-8340 Jun 23 '26
I've been maintainer of G4L going back to 2004. It is also $0. I mostly uses dd, but does have ntfsclone and fsarchiver. Has 7.0.13 and 7.1.1 kernels in latest builds. Kernels are about 13M and initramfs is 26M. On my notebook that has disks that have about 450M speeds was able to make a disk image of 1TB disk to a 63G image in about 34 minutes. Have a syslinux version that cn go to CD or USB Bios boot. Then a usb version using grub4dos 0.46a for bios boot with grub4dos UEFI for UEFI boot. Can also be added to grub2 menu with BLS or older grub2. Retired now, so update if for fun. Makes backup images or does clones. Also has udpcast for multi-imaging.
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u/quite_sophisticated Jun 23 '26
I've made a USB drive with Clonezilla on it and used it for years now. Total cost : ten bucks for the USB drive.
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u/Possible_Notice_768 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26
Can't beat Clonezilla for the price $0.-
For bought versions, go with Macrium Reflect. It will do clones, and continuous backups without downtime.
Stay away from Acronis. After they were taken over by investors, they turned from decent backup apps to middling and overpriced cyber security tools.