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When I want a clone of an harddisk and do this with Clonezilla - with the exactly same sectors and blocks - is it then possible to get the same results with testdisk of the cloned partition like the testdisk results are on the original hard-disk ?! - or is Clonezilla only cloning the "visible" datas ?! With "visible" datas I mean, if Clonezilla is cloning only the used tracks or if Clonezilla is cloning the hidden tracks of the concerning harddisk (with datas who were written in earlier installations after they were formatted) too.

I guess (Clonezilla is basing on Debian Linux), that command is used too like:

sudo rsync -avrpt /dev/source-disk /dev/destination-disk

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  • To assist others, it may help to let us know the command used or the options chosen. With this knowledge it can help understand if a raw copy or a smart copy is being done
    – Wayne
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 23:07
  • I meant in this case, when I use clonezilla-live-system (usb-stick or CD) to make a clone of a partition or of an entire harddisk. In Clonezilla live-system one can choose option of doing clone from partition to partition or of doing clone from harddisk to harddisk. Clonezilla is basing on Debian, so it uses the commands like they are common in Debian. These commands cannot be seen in GUI of Clonezilla.
    – dschinn1001
    Commented Mar 18, 2014 at 0:38
  • I'd assume that the clone isn't really 1:1, at least regarding bad/good sectors etc. I'd be surprised if badblock-(re)allocation would be visible to something outside the firmware.
    – Andreas Wiese
    Commented Mar 18, 2014 at 0:54

1 Answer 1

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If you look at Clonezilla website:

Filesystem supported: (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, btrfs of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, (5) minix of Minix, and (6) VMFS3 and VMFS5 of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Minix and VMWare ESX, no matter it's 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.

and

Based on Partclone (default), Partimage (optional), ntfsclone (optional), or dd to image or clone a partition. However, Clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.

You can see that it does not use rsync but will do intelligent sector copying on known filesystems. If the filesystem is unsupported it will resort to a dd command.

If you want a true clone of the source disk then you can force clonezilla to use dd by using the advanced mode

Update: as mentioned by others, you will not be able to get 100% accurate clone of the source disk from a badblock perspective.

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