 Visitor Reviews |
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Reader supplied reviews for Rescuezilla
Average rating
6.4 from 13 review(s)
Version: 2.6.1
Rating: 4
Date: 2025-07-18
Votes: 2
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It's ok but there's much better alternatives to choose from. The fonts used have been mentioned by others, back in the day i'm sure they were a reasonable choice, but today they're difficult at modern resolutions.
There's something up with using local drives, it doesn't allow copying to them. There's probably some jiggery-pokery using a terminal window but tbh, this far into the 21st century that seems a little archaic when the developer could no doubt fix this.
Considering how long this has been knocking around, I would like to have seen some leaps forward in terms of developing the overall offering, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe the dev thinks it's good enough as-is, or that if users find it difficult to deal with then it's over their head. Whichever the reason, I can't say anything very encouraging about it.
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Version: 2.4.2
Rating: 8
Date: 2024-07-01
Votes: 3
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I think it is a good software; however it has two problems:
1. Fonts are really difficult to read on a resolution higher than Full HD
2. When you explore images, you can't copy files to other mounted hard drives or SSDs. It says that the permission was denied.
There is a way of fixing point 2. though: you have to minimize the GUI (do not close it; otherwise your image will be unmounted), then you have to run a terminal and start the file explorer, from which I don't recall the name right now, then you will be able to copy the from the image explorer to your media.
So, I guess that the file explorer is ran as a normal user and that's why it is not able to copy the files.
As I said, I don't recall the name of the file explorer, but you can see it on the desktop; just type that name (all lowercase) and then it will open from the terminal.
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Version: 2.5
Rating: 1
Date: 2024-05-14
Votes: 8
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Last time Rescuezilla got 6 points from me (v.2.4.1), this time no more than 1 point. What has happened?
Booting from a Ventoy-Stick worked - good!
Unfortunately I couldn't find any way to choose a different screen resolution before booting. On my notebook this ended with hardly readable fonts - bad!
In the menu I found arandr and with some difficulties I was able to choose a suitable resolution.
After that I tried to create a small image via the "Backup" button. I wanted to make an image of the EFI partition (FAT32), the first GPT partition on my NVME-SSD, compressed with zstandard (default compression level). I could create an empty directory on my USB-HDD where the image should be stored.
Finally I wanted to start the backup process, but all buttons in the last step were greyed out. I had to kill the backup GUI and took a look for a logfile or similar, but without any success - very, very bad!
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Version: 2.4.2
Rating: 5
Date: 2023-06-22
Votes: 1
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My first time use on my Lenovo laptop has been a mess but I didn't give up.
PRO
A lot of accessories let you manage/rescue your system.
CONS
The two main bad things I stumbled in so far are:
1. When I close the laptop in battery mode the PC power down. No way to change this behavior.
2. If I have HDMI plugged (TV monitor on) but input is not selected, Rescuezilla is not visible because it shows on HDMI.
Furthermore
The overall system is not so responsive as other backup programs I previously tested.
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Version: 2.4.1
Rating: 6
Date: 2022-09-22
Votes: 2
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Well, Rescuezilla is getting better from version to version.
Language selection again didn't work on my Ventoy stick, so I had to use Balena Etcher again.
Unlike with v2.4 regular graphics settings brought me to a usable Desktop.
I mounted my USB-HDD in order to store the image, but that resulted in a lot of error messages due to a bunch of Clonezilla images on that HDD, which are somehow incompatible to Rescuezilla. This is not a showstopper, but somewhat annoying ...
Creating an image using zstd compression and checking the resulting image went well so far, but think that I can remember Clonezilla being much faster.
I'm still missing the opportunity to create and check an image in only one step instead of two ...
I didn't yet test the retore function of Rescuezilla.
Yes, Rescuezilla seems to be on a good way, and I think it's much easier to use than Clonezilla, which, on the other hand, offers a lot more functions, at least for advanced users.
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Version: 2.4
Rating: 8
Date: 2022-08-20
Votes: 3
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This software is GREAT! I had been using clonezilla for ages and although I was able to navigate it fine it still felt stiff and outdated. I found out about Rescuezilla from Distrotube and quickly loaded it on to my ventoy. It is seamless and quick, the rescuezilla software loaded instantly and was easy to understand. Successfully cloned a partition and a full drive for test purposes and it worked perfectly well, in fact I'm writing this review using an OS I cloned onto a USB from a smaller USB using Rescuezilla. My only issue is that there is no network discovery after turning on wifi. I enabled the wifi setting and attempted to manually add my network before giving up and moving on to other tests since internet wasn't my main goal, but it would be helpful for sure since I'd have access to troubleshooting resources while using the program. Otherwise everything else about it was fantastic, the desktop environment, the full OS suite, all very useful and all very promising!
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Version: 2.4
Rating: 2
Date: 2022-08-09
Votes: 13
|
Unfortunately Rescuezilla is still alpha software.
I created an USB thumbdrive using balenaEtcher. For testing Rescuezilla I used my Acer Aspire3 notebook, which runs quite well under Linux, e.g. with Ubuntu and Slackware.
Rescuezilla booted into a totally black screen with regular graphics settings - but using the failsafe settings (nomodeset, xforcevesa) booted into a usable state.
I wanted to create an image of an ext4 partition and save that image on my USB HDD. Since the rescuezilla program starts automatically after booting, it should be possible to use that USB drive for storing the image when this drive is plugged in while the rescuezilla app is already running, but it does not get recognized. Thus I had to quit the app and restart it manually.
I created the image using zstd compression. After that I tested the verify function, but that ended reproducible in a quite strange error message printing a python backtrace.
I wanted to google that error message, but it was impossible to access the internet via WIFI due to an issue with DBUS and wpa_supplicant. After that I gave up testing Rescuezilla ...
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Version: 2.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-04-15
Votes: 1
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The actual version I used is 2.3.1; I use Ventoy for this and other ISOs, booting from Ventoy USB. My sole interest in Rescuezilla was cloning USB full installs of Linux OS to new USBs, and Rescuezilla didn't disappoint. The GUI is very easy to follow, just select the "clone" option while having your source and target USBs ready. On an i7 with 32GB memory, it only took Rescuezilla 12.2 minutes apiece to perfectly copy source to new. Flawless results; down to personal files perfect copies of partitions and files were had...I can't tell by looking at and using the OS copies whether I'm using the original OS or its clone. I make no claims about other concerns re this multi-purpose tool, but insofar as cloning Linux full-installed to USB my experience with it allows me to greatly recommend it for such cloning purpose.
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Version: 2.3
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-01-10
Votes: 0
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Personal use on two laptops, Dell XPS and HP Pavilion. Being an ex-windows user for 30 years, I love the GUI. I find it to an excellent solution for a reliable system image backup.
Dell XPS has HiDPI monitor which no live boot distros have found a genius solution for. The text is so tiny I have to stick my face in the screen to barely make out what it says to change the resolution.
Since 2.3 release I am making a donation to help continue this "save your buns program".
When I use to distro hop I came one that during the live boot it ask first thing before loading the desktop what resolution choice you desired. I thought this would be an good make-shift solution till a more eloquent one is developed. It could be loaded with large text and image so it is easier to see on 3860 wide screens. This would be far better than the solution clonezilla offers, which is basically little no improvement for the users eyes.
Aside from this, I love the product.
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Version: 2.3
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-01-04
Votes: 0
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I have tried both 2.2, 2.3, and 2.3.1. It works well for both Linux and Windows backups and imaging. I have successfully used all key features on several different machines: backup, restore, and clone. Contrary to the information in previous reviews zstd compression is included. Zstd works well, although extreme compression is slow, but that is zstd not Rescuezilla. The standard gzip is quick on my computer even at maximum compression. 2.3 includes a useful verification feature.
The developer has a detailed development plan and is active and responsive to user input. As a long-time Acronis TrueImage user I am impressed and am in the process of moving to Rescuezilla as my main backup tool. Not surprisingly, given this positive view, I made a donation to support the project.
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Version: 2.3
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-12-25
Votes: 16
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Compared to the Clonezilla it has by far too few features (e.g. only support for gzip, no way to use some more advanced compression methods such as xz or zstd; it doesn't support parallel compression; it's impossible to check the integrity of the created image or to encrypt it; ...). Really lame
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Version: 2.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-10-28
Votes: 34
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My overall impression is very good.
I have been experimenting with Rescuezilla and everything I have tried has worked.
One successful trial of Rescuezilla was to image from one laptop to another, where the two machines were completely different.
And furthermore - the second one had a smaller SSD.
I used the workaround described by the author, which involves using the built-in gparted program, to shrink the partition on the first machine to less than the size of the smaller SSD on the second machine.
You can choose the compression level of the image file, although I stuck to the default level 6.
The GUI was clear and intuitive.
I used it on a laptop for testing various distros - by installing, setting up, imaging - then wiping and installing the next distro. The images made it possible for me to go back to any distro and take it further.
Each image took about nine minutes to make, and about nine minutes to restore.
This is on a seven-year-old laptop with UEFI and a Broadcom graphics card.
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Version: 2.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-10-13
Votes: 0
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I've had very few problems with this system overall. On the few occasions, I have encountered issues I have narrowed it down to being hardware-related and not because of RescueZilla.
The developer is building a community around a well-maintained piece of software offering two releases per year. Built on top of Ubuntu, you can expect a new release approximately a month after an Ubuntu release.
Since I don't use imaging software on a daily basis to make another product worth paying for, and I typically backup to a Network Share, I don't mind a little slowness that sometimes happens. The bottleneck after testing has usually been the destination, whether that be a NAS or an external hard drive. Not all storage is created equally.
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Latest Reviews
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.6.1
Rating: 4
Date: 2025-07-18
Votes: 2
|
It's ok but there's much better alternatives to choose from. The fonts used have been mentioned by others, back in the day i'm sure they were a reasonable choice, but today they're difficult at modern resolutions.
There's something up with using local drives, it doesn't allow copying to them. There's probably some jiggery-pokery using a terminal window but tbh, this far into the 21st century that seems a little archaic when the developer could no doubt fix this.
Considering how long this has been knocking around, I would like to have seen some leaps forward in terms of developing the overall offering, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe the dev thinks it's good enough as-is, or that if users find it difficult to deal with then it's over their head. Whichever the reason, I can't say anything very encouraging about it.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.4.2
Rating: 8
Date: 2024-07-01
Votes: 3
|
I think it is a good software; however it has two problems:
1. Fonts are really difficult to read on a resolution higher than Full HD
2. When you explore images, you can't copy files to other mounted hard drives or SSDs. It says that the permission was denied.
There is a way of fixing point 2. though: you have to minimize the GUI (do not close it; otherwise your image will be unmounted), then you have to run a terminal and start the file explorer, from which I don't recall the name right now, then you will be able to copy the from the image explorer to your media.
So, I guess that the file explorer is ran as a normal user and that's why it is not able to copy the files.
As I said, I don't recall the name of the file explorer, but you can see it on the desktop; just type that name (all lowercase) and then it will open from the terminal.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.5
Rating: 1
Date: 2024-05-14
Votes: 8
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Last time Rescuezilla got 6 points from me (v.2.4.1), this time no more than 1 point. What has happened?
Booting from a Ventoy-Stick worked - good!
Unfortunately I couldn't find any way to choose a different screen resolution before booting. On my notebook this ended with hardly readable fonts - bad!
In the menu I found arandr and with some difficulties I was able to choose a suitable resolution.
After that I tried to create a small image via the "Backup" button. I wanted to make an image of the EFI partition (FAT32), the first GPT partition on my NVME-SSD, compressed with zstandard (default compression level). I could create an empty directory on my USB-HDD where the image should be stored.
Finally I wanted to start the backup process, but all buttons in the last step were greyed out. I had to kill the backup GUI and took a look for a logfile or similar, but without any success - very, very bad!
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.4.2
Rating: 5
Date: 2023-06-22
Votes: 1
|
My first time use on my Lenovo laptop has been a mess but I didn't give up.
PRO
A lot of accessories let you manage/rescue your system.
CONS
The two main bad things I stumbled in so far are:
1. When I close the laptop in battery mode the PC power down. No way to change this behavior.
2. If I have HDMI plugged (TV monitor on) but input is not selected, Rescuezilla is not visible because it shows on HDMI.
Furthermore
The overall system is not so responsive as other backup programs I previously tested.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.4.1
Rating: 6
Date: 2022-09-22
Votes: 2
|
Well, Rescuezilla is getting better from version to version.
Language selection again didn't work on my Ventoy stick, so I had to use Balena Etcher again.
Unlike with v2.4 regular graphics settings brought me to a usable Desktop.
I mounted my USB-HDD in order to store the image, but that resulted in a lot of error messages due to a bunch of Clonezilla images on that HDD, which are somehow incompatible to Rescuezilla. This is not a showstopper, but somewhat annoying ...
Creating an image using zstd compression and checking the resulting image went well so far, but think that I can remember Clonezilla being much faster.
I'm still missing the opportunity to create and check an image in only one step instead of two ...
I didn't yet test the retore function of Rescuezilla.
Yes, Rescuezilla seems to be on a good way, and I think it's much easier to use than Clonezilla, which, on the other hand, offers a lot more functions, at least for advanced users.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.4
Rating: 8
Date: 2022-08-20
Votes: 3
|
This software is GREAT! I had been using clonezilla for ages and although I was able to navigate it fine it still felt stiff and outdated. I found out about Rescuezilla from Distrotube and quickly loaded it on to my ventoy. It is seamless and quick, the rescuezilla software loaded instantly and was easy to understand. Successfully cloned a partition and a full drive for test purposes and it worked perfectly well, in fact I'm writing this review using an OS I cloned onto a USB from a smaller USB using Rescuezilla. My only issue is that there is no network discovery after turning on wifi. I enabled the wifi setting and attempted to manually add my network before giving up and moving on to other tests since internet wasn't my main goal, but it would be helpful for sure since I'd have access to troubleshooting resources while using the program. Otherwise everything else about it was fantastic, the desktop environment, the full OS suite, all very useful and all very promising!
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.4
Rating: 2
Date: 2022-08-09
Votes: 13
|
Unfortunately Rescuezilla is still alpha software.
I created an USB thumbdrive using balenaEtcher. For testing Rescuezilla I used my Acer Aspire3 notebook, which runs quite well under Linux, e.g. with Ubuntu and Slackware.
Rescuezilla booted into a totally black screen with regular graphics settings - but using the failsafe settings (nomodeset, xforcevesa) booted into a usable state.
I wanted to create an image of an ext4 partition and save that image on my USB HDD. Since the rescuezilla program starts automatically after booting, it should be possible to use that USB drive for storing the image when this drive is plugged in while the rescuezilla app is already running, but it does not get recognized. Thus I had to quit the app and restart it manually.
I created the image using zstd compression. After that I tested the verify function, but that ended reproducible in a quite strange error message printing a python backtrace.
I wanted to google that error message, but it was impossible to access the internet via WIFI due to an issue with DBUS and wpa_supplicant. After that I gave up testing Rescuezilla ...
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.3
Rating: 10
Date: 2022-04-15
Votes: 1
|
The actual version I used is 2.3.1; I use Ventoy for this and other ISOs, booting from Ventoy USB. My sole interest in Rescuezilla was cloning USB full installs of Linux OS to new USBs, and Rescuezilla didn't disappoint. The GUI is very easy to follow, just select the "clone" option while having your source and target USBs ready. On an i7 with 32GB memory, it only took Rescuezilla 12.2 minutes apiece to perfectly copy source to new. Flawless results; down to personal files perfect copies of partitions and files were had...I can't tell by looking at and using the OS copies whether I'm using the original OS or its clone. I make no claims about other concerns re this multi-purpose tool, but insofar as cloning Linux full-installed to USB my experience with it allows me to greatly recommend it for such cloning purpose.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.3
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-01-10
Votes: 0
|
Personal use on two laptops, Dell XPS and HP Pavilion. Being an ex-windows user for 30 years, I love the GUI. I find it to an excellent solution for a reliable system image backup.
Dell XPS has HiDPI monitor which no live boot distros have found a genius solution for. The text is so tiny I have to stick my face in the screen to barely make out what it says to change the resolution.
Since 2.3 release I am making a donation to help continue this "save your buns program".
When I use to distro hop I came one that during the live boot it ask first thing before loading the desktop what resolution choice you desired. I thought this would be an good make-shift solution till a more eloquent one is developed. It could be loaded with large text and image so it is easier to see on 3860 wide screens. This would be far better than the solution clonezilla offers, which is basically little no improvement for the users eyes.
Aside from this, I love the product.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.3
Rating: 9
Date: 2022-01-04
Votes: 0
|
I have tried both 2.2, 2.3, and 2.3.1. It works well for both Linux and Windows backups and imaging. I have successfully used all key features on several different machines: backup, restore, and clone. Contrary to the information in previous reviews zstd compression is included. Zstd works well, although extreme compression is slow, but that is zstd not Rescuezilla. The standard gzip is quick on my computer even at maximum compression. 2.3 includes a useful verification feature.
The developer has a detailed development plan and is active and responsive to user input. As a long-time Acronis TrueImage user I am impressed and am in the process of moving to Rescuezilla as my main backup tool. Not surprisingly, given this positive view, I made a donation to support the project.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.3
Rating: 1
Date: 2021-12-25
Votes: 16
|
Compared to the Clonezilla it has by far too few features (e.g. only support for gzip, no way to use some more advanced compression methods such as xz or zstd; it doesn't support parallel compression; it's impossible to check the integrity of the created image or to encrypt it; ...). Really lame
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Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-10-28
Votes: 34
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My overall impression is very good.
I have been experimenting with Rescuezilla and everything I have tried has worked.
One successful trial of Rescuezilla was to image from one laptop to another, where the two machines were completely different.
And furthermore - the second one had a smaller SSD.
I used the workaround described by the author, which involves using the built-in gparted program, to shrink the partition on the first machine to less than the size of the smaller SSD on the second machine.
You can choose the compression level of the image file, although I stuck to the default level 6.
The GUI was clear and intuitive.
I used it on a laptop for testing various distros - by installing, setting up, imaging - then wiping and installing the next distro. The images made it possible for me to go back to any distro and take it further.
Each image took about nine minutes to make, and about nine minutes to restore.
This is on a seven-year-old laptop with UEFI and a Broadcom graphics card.
|
Project: Rescuezilla
Version: 2.2
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-10-13
Votes: 0
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I've had very few problems with this system overall. On the few occasions, I have encountered issues I have narrowed it down to being hardware-related and not because of RescueZilla.
The developer is building a community around a well-maintained piece of software offering two releases per year. Built on top of Ubuntu, you can expect a new release approximately a month after an Ubuntu release.
Since I don't use imaging software on a daily basis to make another product worth paying for, and I typically backup to a Network Share, I don't mind a little slowness that sometimes happens. The bottleneck after testing has usually been the destination, whether that be a NAS or an external hard drive. Not all storage is created equally.
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