Clonezilla is an open-source clone system solution capable of both unicasting and multicasting.

Clonezilla is a free alternative to other cloning systems like Norton Ghost and Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition.  This software comes in two editions, a live CD for backing up and restoring a single machine at a time and  the server edition which includes multicasting for backing up or restoring multiple workstations at once.  The live version can be loaded on a CD or thumb drive for easy portability.  In most cases the live version will be the only version needed.  If you happen to maintain multiple workstations that need to be identical then you are looking for the server edition.

If you are familiar with Ghost already, then you will have no problem transitioning over to Clonezilla.  Everything works almost exactly the same, some wording is different but you already have an understanding of how cloning/imaging works.  If you are new to cloning then you may want to practice the process a few times before jumping into cloning important workstations.  One common problem new users will run into is determining which drive is which in the cloning process.  There will be times when you may work with two identical drives and you will be unable to tell them apart.  It is not uncommon for someone to accidentally clone the empty drive onto the drive that had your information.  It could very frustrating when you figure out that you now have two empty drives instead of two working operating systems.  This mistake can be performed using Ghost or Clonezilla, so new users should be cautious using either application.

Clonezilla has the ability to clone Windows, Linux and even Intel Mac workstations.  It supports a variety of filesystems including NTFS, EXT4 and HFS+.  Clonezilla will also clone both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.  A supported file system will copy only the used portion of the drive in the backup file.  If you use 30GB of a 40GB drive, it will only backup the 30GB.  One great feature of Clonezilla is that if a file system is not supported it will do a sector by sector copy of the drive, which will require more space but you still get you backup of the drive.

Overall, Clonezilla is a great application and I recommend it to anyone that is thinking about purchasing Norton Ghost or Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition.  This is almost guaranteed to do anything you need, and at a substantial savings.  Whether you are backing up your local workstation at home or backing up system images at your job, Clonezilla is worth a try.