Common reasons for cloning a drive include data backup and recovery duplicating a computer's configuration for mass deployment and for preserving data for digital forensics purposes.

Unlike file copying, disk cloning also duplicates the filesystems, partitions, drive meta data and slack space on the drive. Process of duplicating all data on a digital storage driveĭisk cloning is the process of duplicating all data on a digital storage drive, such as a hard disk or solid state drive, using hardware or software techniques.