Part of the Personal computing glossary:

What is disk cloning?

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Disk cloning is the act of copying the contents of a computer's hard drive. The contents are typically saved as a disk image file and transferred to a storage medium, which could be another computer's hard drive or removable media such as a DVD or a USB drive.

Purposes of disk cloning include:

  • System recovery, for example to return a hard drive to its original configuration after serious problems.
  • Provisioning new computers before sale.
  • As a "reboot and refresh" option for public computers.
  • Recreating your system configuration on a new computer.
  • To return a system to an original configuration with no personal data before selling or giving a computer away.

Disk cloning is also known as ghost imaging.

Learn More About IT:
> Wikipedia has more information in its entry about disk cloning.
> Wikipedia also provides a comparison of disk cloning software.

This was last updated in July 2009
Posted by: Margaret Rouse

Related Terms

Definitions

  • Clonezilla

    - Clonezilla is a free open source disk cloning application based on Debian. Like other disk cloning applications, Clonezilla copies the contents of a hard drive for transfer to another storage mediu... (SearchVirtualDesktop.com)

  • Dolly (Digital Dolly)

    - Dolly, also called Digital Dolly, is a program that can quickly clone (copy) drives to drives, drives to files, files to drives, or files to files. Dolly can clone entire disk partitions in block-w... (SearchWindowsServer.com)

  • disk image

    - A disk image is a copy of the entire contents of a storage device, such as a hard drive, DVD, or CD. (WhatIs.com)

Glossaries

  • Personal computing

    - Terms related to personal computers, including definitions about computers sold as consumer products and words and phrases about laptops, tablets and smartphones.

  • Desktop PCs

    - Terms related to PCs, including definitions about desktop computers and words and phrases about computer components.

  • Data and data management

    - Terms related to data, including definitions about data warehousing and words and phrases about data management.

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