Rescuezilla is an application that we classify in the group of “rescue” tools. Free and open source is defined as “the swiss army knife of OS recovery”. And it allows you to perform full backups, restores or clones.

Rescuezilla has a lot in common with Clonezilla, which is standard in this type of task. But compared to its intimidating interface in text mode, it provides a friendly GUI that makes this type of task easier and adds some extra features. Its basis is a Linux distribution ubuntu 22.04along with a lightweight LXDE desktop system and several applications: Firefox as a web browser, a Gparted partition editor, a text editor, a terminal emulator, a screenshot utility, and a file recovery utility.

The strength of this tool is its ability to create backup copies or clone disks and partitions, restore them in case of problems or when changing hardware, for example, when switching from a hard disk to an SSD. For this, it has two applications that are defined with the same name: Backup and Restore and Clone.

The first generates images of the entire drive to an image file on a removable device or over the network, or restores such an image to the drive. The cloning function works directly from disk to disk. The main screen also has functions for checking the image or browsing its contents. And it is possible to limit its functions for use with specific partitions.

How to create and use Rescuezilla

This application is able to work with different formats of disks and file systems and work with machines Windows, Mac and Linux with really minimal requirements:

• Any computer (Intel/AMD compatible)
• 1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended)
• USB flash drive (better than an optical drive, although it can also be used)
• SSD or external hard drive with enough space to store backups.

Its implementation is similar to other rescue tools in bootable ‘Live’ format:

• Download the latest version from their GitHub page which was updated last week (rescuezilla-2.4.2-64bit.jammy.iso)
• Burn the image to a USB flash drive using media creation applications such as balenaEtcher, which is recommended by the developer.
• After creating the media, restart the computer and boot from the USB. You can enter the BIOS/UEFI and place it as the first boot media or use the fastboot hotkeys appropriate for your computer.

The ‘Live’ format allows applications to run without having to install anything from the same media and without interfering with the system you installed.