Disk cloning

[5] However, software cloners tend to allow for greater flexibility because they can exclude unwanted data from being duplicated reducing cloning time.

For example, the filesystem and partitions can be resized by the software allowing data to be cloned to a drive equal to or greater than the total used space.

For example, a group of computers with similar hardware can be set up much quicker by cloning the configuration.

In educational institutions, students are typically expected to experiment with computers to learn.

Because software cannot be installed on the system, a hardware-based cloner is generally used to duplicate the data to another drive or image.

[1] Further, the hardware-based cloner also has write-blocking capabilities which intercepts write commands to prevent data being written to the drive.

Sometimes, booting from the destination drive can fail and require adjustments in the computer's UEFI or BIOS to make the new clone bootable.

[6][13] This approach is not suitable for servers that need to be running all the time and cannot be shutdown routinely to perform the backup (or cloning) operation.

[16] The snapshot creates a virtual drive called a shadow volume that is backed up (or cloned) by the software.

[1] Software solutions can determine the space in use and only copy the used data reducing the time needed to clone the drive.