Clonezilla
Open SourceBare-metal disk and partition imaging.
- Full disk and partition imaging
- Boots from its own live USB or CD
- Mass deployment across many machines
Acronis True Image is paid software from Acronis. These backup & recovery programs do the same job for free.
Bare-metal disk and partition imaging.
Encrypted, incremental backup to any cloud storage.
Enterprise-grade backup technology, free for a single machine.
Disk imaging and encrypted cloud backup are both well covered free. Clonezilla handles bare-metal imaging; Duplicati handles encrypted incremental backup to any cloud provider.
Being honest about it: free alternatives are not always a feature-for-feature match, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. What they are is free — so the cost of finding out whether they cover your particular workflow is an hour of your time rather than a subscription.
Clonezilla creates complete disk and partition images for bare-metal restore or mass deployment, booting from its own live media so it can image a system drive safely. The open-source counterpart to commercial imaging suites.
| Program | Licence | Platforms | Best known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clonezilla | Open Source | Windows, Linux | Full disk and partition imaging |
| Duplicati | Open Source | Windows, macOS, Linux | AES-256 encryption before upload |
| Veeam Agent for Windows FREE | Free | Windows | Full image-level machine backup |
Duplicati backs up to almost any cloud destination — S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, FTP and more — with strong client-side encryption applied before anything leaves your machine, plus incremental, deduplicated storage. Notable for aes-256 encryption before upload and works with most cloud storage providers. Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux.
Veeam Agent brings backup technology developed for enterprise data centres to individual Windows machines at no cost, supporting full image-level backup and bare-metal recovery via its own recovery media. Notable for full image-level machine backup and bare-metal recovery media. Runs on Windows.
2 are fully open source (Clonezilla, Duplicati) — pick one of these if you value auditable code you can self-host. For the widest platform coverage, Duplicati run on three or more operating systems. On a Mac, Duplicati support macOS natively.
All 3 are free to download from the publisher's own website, so installing two or three and testing them on your own files is the fastest way to decide — it costs nothing but a few minutes.
2 of these (Clonezilla, Duplicati) are open source. That means no company can later restrict the free tier, raise a price, or discontinue the product and leave your files stranded — the situation that pushes many people to look for an alternative to Acronis True Image in the first place.
Clonezilla is the closest match — bare-metal disk and partition imaging. If it does not suit your workflow, Duplicati, Veeam Agent for Windows FREE are worth trying.
Acronis True Image is commercial software from Acronis. The programs above are separate products that do the same job — not cracked or modified copies. We do not link to pirated software under any circumstances.
Yes, provided you get them from the publisher. Every button above opens the software author's own official website — we host no installers.