Cloning allows you to make 1:1 copies of entire disks or individual drives that can be used instead of the originals. This function provides you with clones of disks or individual drives, including information about the hard disk layout with all the data saved on it. Clones do, however, require a lot more storage space than an image.
Unlike images, there are no incremental or differential clones possible for reducing the data volume of successive clones. In addition, a clone cannot be compressed or encrypted like an image.
Cloning entire disks
You can create a clone from one or more drives, e.g. hard disk. This will clone all drives located on a hard disks. The following hard disk layouts are supported by O&O DiskImage:
- Cloning a hard disk
- Cloning to or as MBR hard disk
- Cloning to or as GPT hard disk
- Cloning to or as dynamic hard disk
Cloning single drives
You are also able to clone single drives and not only complete hard disks. This incorporates the hard disk layout. The following cloning options are supported by O&O DiskImage:
- Cloning single partitions/volumes
- Cloning of primary, extended, and logical partitions
- Cloning simple, spanned, mirrored volumes
- Cloning the system areas
- Cloning the Master boot records (MBR)
- Exclusive cloning of the Master boot records (MBR)
- Storing of a combination from the above mentioned objects (various hard disks, partitions, volumes or similar in an image)
Modifications for cloning
You can make various adaptations for cloning . Some of these are configured automatically or you can set them yourself. The following adaptations can be set:
- Buffer the original data before a change (Snapshot)
- Automatic conversion of the free areas to an extended partition if the areas are larger than the partition being cloned and no extended partition exists.
- MIR (Machine Independent Restoration), adjust to the different hardware of the clone.