Speed Up System Deployments: Automating Cloning with Clonezilla

Step-by-Step Clonezilla Tutorial for Beginners

Clonezilla is a free, open-source disk imaging and cloning tool that helps you back up, restore, and deploy entire drives or partitions. This tutorial walks you through using Clonezilla Live to create and restore images, with clear, actionable steps and tips for common scenarios.

What you’ll need

• A working computer to clone (source).
• A destination drive or network share with enough space for the image (external USB drive, second internal drive, or network storage).
• A USB flash drive (≥1 GB) or CD/DVD to create Clonezilla Live media.
• A downloaded Clonezilla Live ISO (from the official site) and a tool to write it to USB (e.g., balenaEtcher, Rufus).

Prepare Clonezilla Live USB

1. Download the Clonezilla Live ISO for your system (choose stable release and correct architecture).
2. Use an image-writing tool:
   • Open balenaEtcher or Rufus.
   • Select the Clonezilla ISO and your USB drive.
   • Start writing and safely eject the USB when done.

Boot from Clonezilla Live

1. Insert the Clonezilla USB into the target computer and power on.
2. Enter the boot menu/BIOS (usual keys: F2, F12, Esc, Del) and select the USB drive.
3. At the Clonezilla boot menu, choose “Clonezilla live (Default settings, VGA 800×600)” or similar.

Start Clonezilla and select mode

1. Choose a language and press Enter.
2. Select “Don’t touch keymap” unless you need a different keyboard layout.
3. Choose “Start Clonezilla.”
4. Pick a mode:
   • device-image — save or restore an image to/from a storage location (recommended for backups).
   • device-device — directly clone one disk or partition to another (recommended for disk-to-disk cloning).

This tutorial uses device-image for backups and restores.

Choose where to save the image

1. Select a storage location: local_dev (local devices like external USB), ssh_server, samba_server, or NFS_server.
2. If using local_dev, plug in your external drive and press Enter; Clonezilla will detect available partitions.
3. Choose the partition on the external drive where images will be stored and mount it (Clonezilla will create a directory named “images”).

Create an image (backup)

1. From the main menu select “savedisk” (to image an entire disk) or “saveparts” (to image specific partitions).
2. Enter a descriptive name for the image (e.g., ubuntu-2026-03-05).
3. Select the source disk (the disk you want to image).
4. Choose compression options:
   • gzip (default): good balance of speed and size.
   • lz4: faster compression/decompression, larger files.
   • none: fastest, largest size.
5. Choose advanced options if needed (e.g., check/repair filesystem before saving). Default settings are fine for most users.
6. Confirm the operation and type “y” when prompted. Clonezilla will create the image and show progress. Wait until it finishes.

Restore an image

1. Boot Clonezilla Live and choose the same storage location where the image resides.
2. From the main menu select “restoredisk” (restore whole disk) or “restoreparts” (restore partitions).
3. Select the target disk where the image will be restored (this will overwrite