Disk cloning is the term used for the process in which one hard disk content is completely copied to another as an image(or file) and because of that, this is also called Ghost imaging at times. Disk cloning gained demand when it was seen that copying disks using disk copying machines resulted in wastage of unused space in the new disk. Also, the boot siles and specific system files that were essential for OS to run smoothly had to be placed in the correct locations which was really a tedious job when done manually. Today, many disk cloning programs are available in the market which made copying images of disks easier

There are several uses of cloning a disk. Some of them are as follows:

• Restoration using the image and rebooting to get rid of problems

Restoration of the hard drive contents after a fatal error occurred or after being infected by a malicious virus can be achieved by using a “master copy image” of the disk which is believed to be free of any virus attacks and which can work in an okay manner. Conventional methods used earlier required much experienced technicians to do this part.

• Hard disk upgrade

The user can upgrade to a larger hard disk and copy the former hard disk contents directly and straight away do his works without any need to worry about how he can copy contents of his old hard disk to new one.

• Full system backup

As stated earlier, the image can be used as a full system backup.

• Selling your system

If you want to sell your system, you can copy the master copy image to the disk to make sure that your customer has access to no personal data or settings you had in your system.