OSFClone is currently offered as a free solution, which is likely to change after the current beta test. The program is offered as an ISO image that can be burned to CD or DVD, and as a version for removable storage devices like Flash storage.

The software is self-booting which means that it is independent of operating systems installed on the system. It is based on Tiny Core Linux and boots into a command line interface and not a graphical user interface.

Your first task is to burn the ISO image to DVD, or to copy the contents of the zip file to an USB drive. The USB installation requires additional steps, like launching ImageUSB.exe once you have copied the files to the drive. The steps are explained in detail on the developer homepage.

You end up with a self-booting image that you can start instead of the installed operating systems. This can also be handy if the operating systems are not starting anymore.

The program loads its basic interface and displays the available options in a text menu. You can use the keyboard to select an entry from the available options.

OFSClone can create raw images of a selected drive or partition, or disk images in the Advance Forensics Format. You need to have enough free space available to create the disk image.

Another interesting option is the ability to verify that the cloned drive is identical to the drive source, which is done by comparing hashes between the clone and source drive.

You can then mount the created image on the same or another computer to analyze, access or recover its contents.

OSFClone is easy to use. That, and the fact that it is OS independent make it an interesting tool for users who want to copy or clone a hard disk on a computer system. The program is currently free of charge, and it remains to be seen if this stays this way, or if the developers have intentions to charge for it in the future.

I was about to give up hope and copy the files manually when I came across an extremely powerful, yet simple, Unix command: dd.

Using a Linux live disc, dd can be used to copy files, disks and partitions. It can output directly onto another disc or as an image (like an iso).

dd copies data byte-exactly, meaning it won’t get stuck should it encounter corrupted or fragmented data.

dd is nicknamed ‘destroy disk’ as mistyping one letter can wipe your hard disk, so caution must be used.

To copy a hard disk, one would use the following command (whilst root):

dd if=/dev/hdx of=/dev/hdy

hdx is the input hard disk (to be copied) and hdy is the output hard disk (where it is to be copied to).

if = input
of = output

This is extremely important to remember and their names must be altered according to how they are on your computer (use a tool like gParted to find out your drive’s paths). For example, your ‘if’ may be /dev/sdb whilst your ‘of’ may be /dev/sda, but this obviously varies according to how you want to use it and computer-by-computer so you MUST check. An extremely intelligent friend of mine accidentally wiped a hard drive using this command!

Another use would be to use it to produce a CD image:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=image.iso bs=2k.

Debian Help has a more complete guide.

The Home Edition can copy the contents of a hard disk to up to three client computers with a maximum speed of up to 9 Gigabytes per minute which should be more than enough for home usage. It does have some other limitations in place: Only IDE and SATA hard disks are supported but files can be copied from all filesystems.

The professional disk copy version has a wider range of supported hardware (Firewire, USB..), an almost 7 times higher transfer rate maximum and a maximum client limit of 20.

Technically a Linux Live CD is used to boot the source PC and distribute the data to the other hard disks. Those can be on the same computer or on computers connected over the network.