Clonezilla vs Relax-and-Recover
Clonezilla
clonezilla.orgRelax-and-Recover
relax-and-recover.orgSide by side
| Figure | Clonezilla | Relax-and-Recover |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Backup software | 8.6 (#32) | 8.0 (#67) |
| Spec score · Disk Imaging Software | 8.7 (#7) | 8.1 (#13) |
| Backup scope | mixed | ReaR complements backup and restore with bare metal recovery, and the maker says it is not backup management software. |
| Computer backup | Yes | Yes |
| Current release | The downloads page lists stable Clonezilla live 3.3.3-37 as Debian-based and alternative stable 20260913-resolute as Ubuntu-based. | The download page states that ReaR v2.9 was released in January 2025 and provides packages through GitHub Releases and Linux distribution repositories. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Supported platforms | Linux-based bootable environment; can image supported file systems used by Linux,Windows,Mac,BSD,Minix,VMware ESX,and Chrome OS/Chromium OS | Linux |
| Purpose | Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging and cloning program for system deployment, bare metal backup, and recovery. | ReaR creates bootable disaster recovery images for bare-metal recovery with data restore on physical or virtual replacement hardware. |
| Restore modes | mixed | mixed |
| Server backup | Yes | Yes |
Plans
In their own words
Clonezilla
Clonezilla is a free, open-source program for imaging and cloning partitions and disks for system deployment, bare-metal backup, and recovery. Clonezilla live is suited to one machine; lite server and Clonezilla SE can clone many computers at once, with the site describing 40-plus computers. It saves and restores used blocks on supported file systems and uses sector-to-sector copying for unsupported ones. Listed file systems include Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD, Minix, and VMware formats, including ext4, NTFS, APFS, and VMFS3/5. Images can be kept on a local disk or SSH, Samba, NFS, or WebDAV servers, and can be encrypted with AES-256. Clonezilla SE supports multicast, while lite server supports BitTorrent deployment. Clonezilla live supports BIOS or UEFI boot and MBR and GPT. It requires an x86 or x86-64 processor, 196 MB RAM, and a boot device. The destination partition must be at least as large as the source. Differential and incremental backups and online imaging are not implemented; images cannot be mounted or explored for direct individual-file recovery.
Relax-and-Recover
Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) is a free, GPL-licensed Linux disaster-recovery framework from Relax-and-Recover, founded in 2006. It creates bootable recovery images for restoring systems to replacement physical or virtual hardware. The workflow rebuilds storage layouts, restores data through a backup program, and installs a boot loader. Recovery can be guided or fully unattended, including physical-to-virtual, virtual-to-physical, physical-to-physical, and virtual-to-virtual moves. Boot media includes ISO, USB, eSATA, bootable tape, and PXE. Built-in backup methods include tar and rsync, with integrations such as Bacula, Borg, Commvault, NetBackup, and Veeam. Supported storage technologies include RAID, LVM, multipathing, DRBD, iSCSI, and LUKS. ReaR is written in Bash with a modular design for extensions, and Disaster Recovery Linux Manager can centrally manage deployments. It must run as root, exposes no network services or ports, and version 2.9 was released in January 2025.