The big difference between cloning a disk/partition & an image backup is that the backup image takes up less space, because normally the free space isn’t included. Transferring the contents of one disk/partition to another, cloning requires a single step, with the requirement that both disks or partitions are connected to the PC [or whatever device] and online. Restoring an image backup doesn’t have that requirement – just need the backup archive connected – but requires two steps.
Considering that most all image backup apps also do cloning, the potential usefulness of DMclone that occurs to me is that the popular Macrium Reflect backup app does not yet backup or clone USB sticks – you could clone the USB stick to a .vhd file that you created & mounted in Windows for a backup. That said, DMclone uses Easeus drivers [which is good], so the question is why not just install the free version of the Easeus backup app instead? You get more functionality for free. Or any known brand of image backup app that has a free version if the Easeus drivers have some sort of conflict on your system, e.g., Paragon, AOMEI, Macrium etc.
Note: Windows assigns a GUID to every connected drive partition, and those GUIDs must be unique. That means that if you clone a disk/partition and have both the clone & the original connected to the same device, Windows will not work with both until you fix that [Admin Tools -> Computer Mgmt.]
DMclone itself is stored only in the programs folder – no other folders added – and I recorded 100 new registry entries in my Win7 32-bit VM. Uninstall appears to remove the Easeus drivers that were added and requires a restart – curious since the installation did not (?).
On a side note, one of the comments on the GOTD page asked about merging partitions… some partitioning apps do have a merge function, which puts the contents of one partition in a folder on the 2nd. That’s obviously not what the person wanted – “Specifically old(er) Os(that is not Windows 10) games and game data with keys to a current Windows 10 Os” . The way to do that would be to upgrade that OS to Win10. If the old OS was on one machine, and the desired target was another, I’d suggest upgrading the original device, then attempting to transfer that copy of Win10 to the new device, since Win10 will automatically try to evolve to work on the new hardware, adding drivers etc.
2nd side note: one comment talked about booting to a USB stick/drive before cloning as this would seemingly be more accurate than using VSS [the Windows service that allows you to copy files in use]. In my experience this is *Maybe* *somewhat* true. I do backups on our 2 desktop PCs using a 2nd copy of Win10 -- it's easier than messing around booting to a USB drive, and the result is slightly smaller backups, but in large part that's because I also delete the pagefile & swapfile before I backup. On the rest of our Windows devices backing up normally works just fine -- I verify each one, and have performed restores that work just fine. Backup & restore &/or cloning does work well using my Windows to Go drive, but that's an SSD using USB 3 with UASP -- doing the same thing with a USB stick, e.g. using the one you create in Macrium Reflect, is Much slower in comparison, and that would be my biggest concern.