Create Automated Backup with Clonezilla or Easier Alternative

Quick Navigation:

• Can you use Clonezilla for automated backup?
• How to perform unattended backup with Clonezilla?
• Is there Clonezilla like software for automated backup in Windows?
• Set up automated backup with Clonezilla alternative

Can you use Clonezilla for automated backup?

Clonezilla is a powerful partition and disk imaging & cloning program. Normally you can download the pre-build Clonezilla live in a bootable CD/DVD, USB flash drive or hard drive for single machine backup and restore. But it's quite cumbersome to complete the operation, especially when you need to do backup frequently.

Therefore, many users would like to automate the process and skip the manual setup to run unattended backup with Clonezilla, which is possible, but very difficult for novice. Moreover, if you want to set up a schedule to backup specific data on regular basis, things get even more complicated.

Besides, Clonezilla has some limitations in functionality: It doesn’t support incremental or differential backup, which is a great pity because you cannot copy only changed files to save time and space. When it comes to restoration, it doesn’t support mounting or exploring image either, thus you cannot restore individual files from the backup.

All in all, it’s recommended to perform automated backup with an easier alternative to Clonezilla.

How to perform unattended backup with Clonezilla?

If you simply want to automate the backup and restore process of Clonezilla, here are some information for your reference.

How to use Clonezilla: Download Clonezilla live. ISO for CD/DVD and ZIP for USB flash drive/hard drive. Then you can follow this instruction to install Clonezilla live on corresponding media.

Insert the bootable media containing Clonezilla live to your computer, enter BIOS to set it as the first boot option. When the media boots, you can select Start_Clonezilla after keymap selection.

How to do unattended backup with Clonezilla: You can modify boot parameters to make Clonezilla live work with less interactive steps, or even run in an unattended mode.

Kernel boot parameters are text strings to change specific behaviors, enable or disable certain features. Different boot loaders use different config files for the boot parameters:

Find the correct config file, then you can preseed options according to the boot parameters of Clonezilla live.

For instance:

Preseed the language as English: locales=en_US.UTF-8

Preseed the keymap as no change: keyboard-layouts=NONE

For more examples, you can read this guide.

Is there Clonezilla like software for automated backup in Windows?

In Windows, there are many software with easier operation and schedule options to automate backup, one example is the built-in Backup and Restore. It enables you to backup libraries and folders daily, weekly or monthly, but if you want to create a system image, there’s no schedule option.

Besides, this tool is error-prone in practice and also lacks some useful features (such as disk cloning), so personally, I would like to introduce another program as an alternative to Clonezilla.

AOMEI Backupper Standard is also an imaging and cloning software, but with much easier interface and operation. You don’t need to put it into a CD or USB, just download it on Windows PC and fulfill any task with several clicks.

For automated backup, this Clonezilla alternative enables you to schedule backup files & folders, partitions, system or entire hard disk. A scheduled backup will run in incremental mode by default to save your backup time and storage space. Also, you are allowed to mount and explore image to restore individual files from it.

In addition to imaging, it also allows you to sync folders with a schedule, clone disk or partitions, created bootable media, wipe hard drive, etc. Download the free tool to have a try.

Set up automated backup with Clonezilla alternative

Performing automatic backup can save your time on manual operations while keeping the data up to date. Now, I will take system backup as an example and introduce how to automate it with AOMEI Backupper.

Step 1. Open the software, go to Backup tab and select System Backup. You can also choose other options according to your needs.

Step 2. The system partition will be selected automatically, you just need to specify a destination path such as internal/external hard drive, USB flash drive, NAS, network share, cloud drive.

Step 3. Click Schedule to create an automated backup. Options include Daily, Weekly, Monthly. You can also configure the intervals or time point to set the schedule in more detail.

You can upgrade to Professional edition to enjoy more useful options:
Advanced schedule options: Event triggers (like startup or shutdown), USB plug in.
Scheduled differential backup: Auto backup changed or newly added files since the last full backup.
Automatic cleanup: Create a retention policy in Backup Scheme to auto delete backups older than x days.

Step 4. Click Start Backup to execute it. After the first full backup, it will run automatically in the background according to schedule without disturbing your normal operation.

Other helpful features:

• Image compression - in backup options, you can choose the compression level to further save storage space.
• File filter (advanced edition) - when you perform file backup, you can include or exclude files with specific suffix in the source directory.
• Real time sync (advanced edition) - if you want to create an exact copy of folders as backup, you can also use this feature to automatically sync changed files from source to target in real time, thus you don’t need to set up any schedule.

Summary

Performing automated backup with Clonezilla may be complicated and have some function defects. If you are a Windows user, there are actually many alternatives can do the job easily. Among them, AOMEI Backupper is a good choice to automate backup with a schedule. If you prefer to copy folders with original structure, you can also create schedule for sync tasks, or even perform it in real time.

As an adequate alternative to Clonezilla, AOMEI also supports you to clone disk, or transfer OS to another hard drive. With the intelligent cloning technology, you can even clone larger drive to smaller drive.