Rescuezilla
Clonezilla with a real graphical interface. The best free starting point.
- Licence
- Free / open source
- Price
- Free (GPL)
- Platform
- Bootable Linux ISO — clones Windows, Linux and macOS drives
- Current version
- Actively maintained; Ubuntu-based releases
- Developer
- Shasheene / community project
- Clones the Windows system disk for free
- Yes
- Clone to a smaller drive
- With effort
- Official site
- rescuezilla.com
The verdict
Rescuezilla is a friendly front end over the same battle-tested engine Clonezilla uses, and its images are interchangeable with Clonezilla's. For most home users who want a free tool and do not want to decipher a text menu, this is the one to try first.
Who it is for
Home users who want free, open-source cloning without the Clonezilla learning curve; anyone rescuing files from a PC that will not boot.
Strengths
- Point-and-click wizard with plain-English steps
- Fully compatible with Clonezilla image files
- Bundles a file manager, web browser and partition editor for rescue work
- Can browse inside an image and pull out individual files
- Free, open source, no account required
Limitations
- Still requires making a bootable USB stick and rebooting
- Releases are less frequent than Clonezilla's, so very new hardware may need a wait
- Resizing partitions to fit a smaller target is manual
- No Windows-side scheduling or incremental backups
Worth knowing
Because it boots its own Linux environment, Rescuezilla works even when Windows is too broken to start — which is exactly when you most want to clone a dying drive.
The interface
assets/img/screenshots/ and swap the src above. See the README in
that folder.
Before you clone anything
The destination drive is erased completely. Confirm which physical disk is which — by
size, model number and serial, not just by drive letter — and keep a separate backup of
anything irreplaceable. Our pre-clone checklist
takes about fifteen minutes and prevents most disasters.