Clonezilla
A bootable USB stick that images whole disks block by block — for the machines a Mac backup tool will not touch.
What it does
Clonezilla Live boots a small Linux environment whose only job is copying disks: disk to disk, disk to image, partition to partition, to a local drive or over SSH, Samba or NFS. It reads the filesystem where it can — ext4, XFS, NTFS, FAT, APFS and others — and copies only used blocks, falling back to a full sector copy for anything it does not recognise.
Nothing runs on the machine being imaged, which is the point: the disk is offline and consistent while it is copied.
Notes
- Officially x86 and x86-64. The experimental arm64 builds are not tested against Apple Silicon, and an Apple Silicon Mac will not boot it — this is a tool for Intel Macs and for the PCs, hypervisor hosts and NAS boxes beside them.
- APFS is recognised for cloning, but restoring a macOS system volume to bootability is not something to rely on. Use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! for Macs.
- Write the ISO to a stick with balenaEtcher or macUSB.
- Clonezilla SE is the same engine as a server, imaging a room full of machines over the network at once.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Macrium Reflect | Paid | The Windows standard, with a scheduler; nothing to run on macOS |
| Rescuezilla | Open source | The same engine behind a graphical interface, and it reads Clonezilla images |
| Carbon Copy Cloner | Paid | For Macs specifically, and it runs while the Mac is running |
| Parted Magic | Paid | A wider rescue toolkit on the same kind of stick |
dd | Built in | Copies any disk to any file, with no filesystem awareness and no seatbelt |
Install
Download the ISO, then write it to a stick:
brew install --cask balenaetcherSelect the Clonezilla ISO, select the USB device, flash. Boot the target machine from it — on a Mac, hold Option at startup.