Modern cloning software tends to communicate with storage devices through a common interface, which means, that any storage device can be cloned and migrated. The procedure can be used when migrating from mechanical hard disk drives to solid state drives.
Usb cloning software free drivers#
This reduces the need to having to manually reinstall applications, drivers and the operating system.
Upgrading to a larger or faster drive can be facilitated by cloning the old drive to the new drive once it is installed into the system. In modern software solutions, it is not uncommon for disk cloning techniques to be combined with disk imaging techniques to create a backup solution. The clone can be used to restore corrupted files such as corrupted databases. Backup ĭisk cloning can be used as a backup solution by creating a duplicate of data as it existed when the clone was started. Further, the hardware-based cloner also has write-blocking capabilities which intercepts write commands to prevent data being written to the drive. Because software cannot be installed on the system, a hardware-based cloner is generally used to duplicate the data to another drive or image. Typically, the cloning process itself must not interfere with the data. Techniques for cloning a disk for forensic purposes differ from cloning a drive for other purposes. This aims to ensure that data is preserved at the time it was acquired for later analysis. One of the most common applications of disk cloning is for digital forensics purposes. Thus, disk cloning seeks to mitigate this administrative challenge. Further, while installing the operating system is quick, installation of programs and ensuring a consistent configuration is time consuming. Disk cloning can be used to help keep computers clean and configured correctly. In educational institutions, students are typically expected to experiment with computers to learn. For example, a group of computers with similar hardware can be set up much quicker by cloning the configuration. Some hardware cloners can clone only the used space but tend to be much more expensive.Īpplications Deployment Ī common use of disk cloning is for deployment. Most hardware-based cloners typically require for the destination drive to be the same size as the source drive even if only a fraction of the space is used. For example, the filesystem and partitions can be resized by the software allowing data to be cloned to a drive equal to or greater than the total used space. However, software cloners tend to allow for greater flexibility because they can exclude unwanted data from being duplicated reducing cloning time.
A hardware-based drive cloner can be used which does not require a computer. Once connected, a disk cloner is used to perform the clone itself. Typically, the destination drive is connected to a computer (Fig. The data is then either written directly to another (destination) drive or to a disk image. A small amount of data is read and then held in the computer's memory. While called "disk cloning", any type of storage medium that connects to the computer via USB, NVMe or SATA can be cloned. Drive cloning can be used in conjunction with drive imaging where the cloned data is saved to one or more files on another drive rather than copied directly to another drive.īackground Figure 1: An illustration of connecting two drives to a computer to clone one drive (the source drive) to another (the destination) drive.ĭisk cloning occurs by copying the contents of a drive called the source drive. Common reasons for cloning a drive include data backup and recovery duplicating a computer's configuration for mass deployment and for preserving data for digital forensics purposes. Unlike file copying, disk cloning also duplicates the filesystems, partitions, drive meta data and slack space on the drive. Process of duplicating all data on a digital storage driveĭisk cloning is the process of duplicating all data on a digital storage drive, such as a hard disk or solid state drive, using hardware or software techniques.
0 kommentar(er)
