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.
