CloneZilla: HDD Cloning - Dual Boot (Windows + Linux)

Question

I learnt that clonezilla is a software for cloning the HDD's. I am setting up a laboratory for students, who would work on Linux and Windows for different and respective purposes.

Some of the systems in the Laboratory already contain a running OS, but do not have the software. Also they are not dual bootable.

I have done the following:

1. Created a live USB for booting as mentioned on the CloneZilla website.
2. Created an image of the entire HDD on the source computer, on a pocket HDD with 1TB space.

Now I want to copy the image (cloning activity Part 2), to the new HDD. I am wondering about the formatting of the HDD and the partition table. Will the CloneZilla take care of the entire activity?

I am asking this question because the answer here Does clonezilla format the destination HDD? is not quite clear.

I am also interested in making multiple copies of the same HDD over the LAN (where I do not have two Ethernet cards) but I would put it as a separate question.

Answer 1

You made an image of a whole drive (not a partition or a set of partitions). Clonezilla will create a working system of it in the target drive. I have done it and it worked. You need not do any pre-formatting.

Notice that the target drive must be of the same size or bigger (not one single byte smaller) compared to the original drive. If the target drive is smaller, things can get complicated.

Are you aware of the OEM install method of Ubuntu? It helps making the cloned copies into individual systems, that differ enough to work well in a local network.

Edit: Clonezilla can work locally as well as via the network (ssh/sftp).