Searching for a USB HDD/SDD clone backup solution

[loninapleton]

What is the current recommendation by HDDGuru for a freeware NTFS clone program loaded from a USB drive?

My target on this is an Asus Prime A320 with UEFI BIOS. This has shown problems loading
my older CD/DVD version of Norton Ghost I've used for a long time. Apparently the firmware in the Asus UEFI BIOS can be adjusted and I have a question in to their tech support since it is not easily found.

A lot of newer clone progs seem to have more bloat or are confusing to understand in the
area of partitions. My clone jobs are simply disc to disc.

I may have to return to some Hirens install which I did many years ago that has the Ghost program on it.

For those reading I was able to run the old Ghost on a Win7 MSI 880gm and get my backups made for the Asus running Windows 10. It works but a workaround.

Any help appreciated.

[Lardman]

Creating a clone and a file system aware backup are different tasks. If all you're doing is cloning good drives onto larger ones ddrescue or hddsuperclone and then resize the partitions with gparted or similar. Otherwise something from Macrium would probably be the way to go.

[loninapleton]

Thanks for answering. What you say may be more than needed.
I'm trying out AOMEI Backupper which seems to install easily but I have yet to see if I got the install to USB ready to boot.

Install to USB is a substitute to deal with that UEFI load problem on CD/DVD the old way. Because it's confusing, I'm asking for a response from tech support at ASUS.

Macrium I have started and quit any number of times. That is one of those programs I mentioned at the outset. Their 35 page manual is daunting for someone not in IT and making a big project out of everything. If Macrium, a stable software, had some standalone installer for a USB stick that is is something I could handle.

[loninapleton]

The latest on this is that the current AOMEI blocks the use of clone (and who knows what else) with a cover screen to buy the paid for upgrade. I've seen other online complaints on this.
The 'solution' is to find AOMEI 5.9.0 on FileHippo. I did that. It must be too old to install properly on Windows 10/.

[loninapleton]

I am going to see what HDSuperclone is from above recommendation.

I burned a Clonezilla ISO to CD/DVD and that booted ok. It gave a fail at looking at a WD 1 Tb to Adata 250 Gb that had adequate space. Clonezilla reporting Source and Target disk size seemed a problem. More simply put I never understood how to use those Linux Live Cds. Clonezilla never looks like a finished product to me and more for Linux experts. I tried it once before long ago.

So onward to Superclone.