dvd cloner

Disk Cloning is a category of software which copies the contents of one computer hard disk to another. Often, the contents of the first disk are written to an image file as an intermediate step, and the second disk is loaded from the image.

A disk cloning program is most commonly used by large companies to provision new computers, by a computer manufacturer to install the initial package of the operating system and applications for sale, or by a training or educational institute to refresh the software on the computers used by a class. An individual user may use disk cloning to upgrade to a new hard disk, or to create a comprehensive backup of his operating system and installed software.

This article is specific to disk cloning on the x86 platform; specific details may not apply to other platforms.

To provision the hard disk of a computer without using disk cloning software, the following steps are generally required for each computer:

With disk cloning, this is simplified to: