Rescuezilla: open source backup, restore and recovery environment

Rescuezilla is a free open source disk imaging solution that supports data backups, restores and recovery actions. The application is operating system agnostic, as it needs to be put on an optical disc or an USB drive; one of the benefits that comes out of that, is that may access the application at any time, even if the PC does not boot anymore.

Rescuezilla is fully compatible with Clonezilla, a disk imaging solution that is also open source. One of the main differences between the two solutions is that Rescuezilla has a graphic user interface that should make it easier to use for some users.

The process of creating a working copy of Rescuezilla is straightforward:

1. Download the latest version of the backup program from the official project website. Version 2.4, which we used for testing, has a size of about 1 Gigabyte.
2. Use an USB writer program such as balenaEtcher to write the image to the USB drive. If you want to use a DVD instead, use a DVD writer application.
3. Boot from the USB drive or the optical disc to launch the application.

Rescuezilla is based on Ubuntu Linux.

Once there, you get easy options to create backups, restore previously created backups, clone a disk, verify images, or use the built-in image explorer.

When you select backups, which you may do on the first start, you will get a list of all connected drives, their capacity, drive model, and partitions it contains. From there, you may select to save all partitions of the selected drive or only some of them.

Backups may be stored to a destination drive that is connected to the computer directly, e.g., an external hard drive, or to a network share.

The restore option becomes available once the first backup has been completed. It is a simple process to restore an entire partition or all partitions of a drive.

Rescuezilla is compatible with virtual machine images, including those created by VirtualBox, VMWare, Hyper-V and Qemu. It supports raw image formats next to that, and may also be used to clone disks.

Image Explorer is a beta feature of the open source application to browse files that are found inside backups.

Rescuezilla has a handful of extra features that may prove useful at one point. The solution includes a working internet browser, which may be useful to quickly download drivers or updates that may be required to repair a system. The tool supports options to manage partitions, e.g., resize them, which may also prove useful to some users.

Closing Words

Rescuezilla is a powerful operating system agnostic backup solution. It's user interface may look dated to some, but it is easy to use for the most part.  The program supports features, such as being operating system agnostic, that many regular backup solutions do not offer. On the other hand, it lacks support for scheduled backup jobs and some other features that backup programs such as Paragon Backup Recovery Free or Macrium Reflect 8 offer.

Now You: which backup solution do you use? (via Deskmodder)

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