Home › Comparison
Ten tools, the same seven questions. The column that matters most is the third one: whether the free version will clone the drive Windows is installed on.
| Tool | Licence | Price | Free system-disk clone | Clone to smaller drive | Graphical interface | Platform |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clonezilla Live The open-source workhorse. Ugly, free, and it clones anything. |
Free & open source | Free (GPL) | Yes | With effort | No Text menus only |
Bootable Linux ISO — clones Windows, Linux, macOS drives |
| Rescuezilla Clonezilla with a real graphical interface. The best free starting point. |
Free & open source | Free (GPL) | Yes | With effort | Yes Full point-and-click wizard |
Bootable Linux ISO — clones Windows, Linux and macOS drives |
| Hasleo Disk Clone Free system cloning from inside Windows, with no artificial paywall. |
Free | Free (personal use) | Yes | Yes | Yes Simple Windows wizard |
Windows 7 through Windows 11 / Server |
| AOMEI Backupper Standard Polished free backup suite — but boot-drive cloning is now a paid feature. |
Free tier, paid cloning | Free edition; Professional around $49.95 (lifetime licence, frequently discounted) | No | With effort | Yes Polished Windows interface |
Windows 7 through Windows 11 |
| EaseUS Todo Backup Free for backups, paid for cloning. Know which one you need. |
Free tier, paid cloning | Free edition; Home around $39.95 one-off, subscriptions also sold | No | Yes | Yes Consumer-friendly interface |
Windows 7 through Windows 11 |
| Macrium Reflect The enthusiast favourite. The free edition is gone; the paid one is still excellent. |
Paid | Reflect Home around $49.99 per year; multi-year plans discounted | Yes | Yes | Yes Dense but powerful |
Windows 10 / 11, Windows Server (separate licence) |
| Acronis True Image Cloning plus cloud backup and anti-malware, at a subscription price. |
Paid | From around $49.99 per year (Essentials); Advanced around $57.99; Premium around $124.99 | Yes | Yes | Yes Slick, heavy |
Windows and macOS |
| Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows FREE Enterprise-grade image backup and bare-metal restore, free for personal use. |
Free | Free (registration required) | No | With effort | Yes Straightforward, businesslike |
Windows 10 / 11 and Windows Server |
| SSD vendor tools (Samsung, WD, Crucial, Seagate) Free with the drive you just bought — if the destination is the right brand. |
Free | Free, but only works with that vendor's drives | Yes | With effort | Yes Simple, single-purpose |
Windows (macOS support varies) |
| dd and ddrescue The command line answer. Total control, zero safety net. |
Free & open source | Free (GPL) | Yes | No | No Command line only |
Linux, macOS, BSD; available on Windows via WSL or a live USB |
Free system-disk clone is the honest test of whether a tool is free for the job most visitors have. Plenty of programs will happily clone a secondary data drive at no cost and then stop the moment you point them at C:.
Clone to smaller drive is marked “with effort” where the tool can do it but will not resize partitions for you — you have to shrink the source partition in Windows first. See cloning to a smaller SSD for the procedure.
Veeam Agent Free is included even though it has no direct clone function, because backup-then-bare-metal-restore reaches the same destination and the free tier is unusually generous.
If you want free and you do not mind booting from a USB stick, use Rescuezilla. If you want free and you want to stay inside Windows, use Hasleo Disk Clone. If you just bought a name-brand SSD, check the manufacturer's own tool first. If cloning is part of a wider backup habit and you are willing to pay, Macrium Reflect is still the benchmark.