Backup, backup, backup. Tedious from every point of view, but the only effective way to protect our information. The cloud has become a good alternative when it comes to backing up specific files, however, when we talk about local hard drives and SSDs, we need something different. That's when Rescuezilla comes in, a free and open source tool that can easily create images of our drives, and read backups from other sources like Clonezilla and Foxclone.
The task seems overwhelming at first, but your underlying need doesn't change: You must back up what you cannot afford to lose. In many cases, that extends to "everything" on a disk, including the operating system with its configuration, and that's when recovery images come to the rescue.
The problem is that many utilities restrict this feature to their premium versions, or have other restrictions that make them useless. Fortunately, there are free and open source alternatives that are relatively easy to use, and among them Rescuezilla stands out, which brings two tricks up its sleeve: it is compatible with the classic Clonezilla, and presents users with a much more friendly graphical interface.
How to Back Up and Restore Disks with Rescuezilla
Rescuezilla works in the same way as a live distro, so you will need to download its latest ISO image (version 2.4 of 1.06 GB at the time of writing), and burn the content to a USB drive using Rufus, Balena Etcher, or something similar. Once booted, Rescuezilla enables five basic functions: Backup, Restore, Clone, Verify image, and an Image Explorer in beta version.
Backing up disks is a matter of selecting the source drive, the destination drive (it can be an external disk, SSD, USB drive, or network drive), and letting the program do its job. However, its developer warns that Rescuezilla does not have the ability to reduce the size of an image (the famous auto-shrink) to then copy it to a smaller drive. For example, if we back up 80 GB stored on a 240 GB SSD and try to restore it to a 120 GB SSD, the program will throw an error. The feature will be included in future editions of Rescuezilla, so we have to wait.
It's also worth mentioning that Rescuezilla includes some secondary tools. In its live environment we find a preinstalled copy of Firefox, the classic GParted for managing partitions, and the TestDisk/PhotoRec combo that will help us recover general data and photos. Would you like to try it and back up disks with Rescuezilla? Link below!
Official site and download: Click here
