When you require a large amount of data to be transferred between different systems, storage types, file formats, or old systems, then data migration tools are your perfect knight in shining armor that ensure the smoothness, stability, and efficiency of the data migration process. This migration is made effective and adaptable between two different systems or formats by including a mapping pattern. Map ensures the data loading and data extraction are done correctly by acting as a translator, transforming the older data format to the newer format. Data migration becomes a necessity of the business because they aid in maintaining the activities or upgrading them, for application migration, provides the replacement for the storage server, relocates the data or for data center migration, for website consolidation, and many more. Although data migration would require a lot of time and energy if done manually, that is when data migration tools come in handy. This whole process is distributed in 3 phases, extracting data from the old system, then uploading this data to the desired new format or system, and lastly ensuring the accuracy of uploaded data by verification.

Since every industry has shown massive growth over the past few years. This extreme expansion of business has put data migration in the spotlight. Also, to strive for the best, businesses must jump to better and upgraded applications from time to time that are capable of handling and managing extensive data. For this reason, plenty of data migration tools are also available in the market that enhances the functionality of your business and are perfectly capable of carrying out the process as smoothly and effectively as possible. We have gathered a list of the top 5 free and open-source data migration tools that will enable you to achieve more and grow exponentially.

Rsync

Remote synchronization is a powerful and effective tool that lets you transfer and synchronize the data between two sources and is particularly efficient in the case of incremental transfer. This tool minimizes the transfer time, reduces bandwidth, and also reduces the amount of data by incorporating a combination of algorithms that only transfer the parts of data that have been changed. Another efficient method of data transfer is delta encoding which enables the tool to assess the data files and transfer only the unique parts of data hence reducing overall data transfer. Rsynce empowers its users to share data to different directories on the same system or to multiple systems connected over a network via remote transfer. To ensure the security of the data while remote transfer, Rsync uses the secure shell which encrypts data and finds a safe connection. It also has the capability of preserving various attributes of the transferred data during sync like time stamps, permissions, ownership, and symbolic links. If for any unfortunate reason, data transfer is interrupted, then it resumes from where it left off. This unique feature makes Rsync resilient to any unfortunate disruptions. Plenty of features, efficiency, and flexibility have made this application a standard tool for data transfer among users.

Get it now from https://rsync.samba.org/download.html

Clonezilla

Clonezilla is an amazing free and open-source solution for your disk cloning, data migration, imaging, backup, and recovery needs. Clonezilla allows its users to create an exact copy of the entire disk or some parts of it and store it as an image file that can be stored in external storage and can be referred to for future use. Apart from the Clonezilla image format, it also supports many other image formats that provide flexibility to the users including part clone, bzip2, and gzip. This tool also supports Live CD/USB and many file formats which enhance its functionality and eventually the user experience. It offers both novice and expert modes for beginners to learn and experts to excel. A little difficulty that can give newbies a tough time is the text-based user interface but the application comes with a lot of learning and educational material so that you can carry out smooth work.

Get it now from https://clonezilla.org/downloads.php

dd

Data duplicator is a low-level data migration tool comprised of some powerful features like block-level data copy that allows you to copy data block by block from one resource to the other, flexibility to support multiple file formats that enable users to complete a variety of data migration tasks, it provides you with byte level control that eventually optimizes the transfer speed. Also, while you are copying the data you can perform conversion and transform this data too. Dd also empowers to monitor the progress of data transfer, speed, and byte transferred. This feature is really helpful if you have a large data file to be transferred. Dd enables you to handle errors in case any occur. Since dd is a low-level data migration tool that is why it requires a lot of attention and caution while transferring the data otherwise it can cause damage to your data.

Get it now from https://osdn.net/projects/sfnet_ddgui/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip/

GParted

Gparted is an open-source and free data migration platform that provides users with remarkable and powerful features. Apart from migration, it also enables you to manage, manipulate, resize, format, and move graphical partitions. Gparted has a very friendly user interface and intuitive layout that enables users to visualize the partitions and their properties. You can easily create new partitions, delete existing ones, create free space by shrinking and resizing the partitions, and transfer them. You can work on the files formatted with different systems because GParted supports multiple file systems. Apart from these amazing features, GParted also has a live environment, smart partition resizing, detailed information about partition properties, and supports batch operations.

Get it now from https://gparted.org/download.php

IRI NextForm

IRI NextForm is a magnificent tool but it does not have an open-source environment. It comes in two versions, IRI NextForm Lite is free and provides enough features to fulfill your requirements for a small-scale business. It has an extensive list of features and capabilities that make its use popular. It also supports multiple formats and does not require expensive hardware to manage large data.

Get it now from https://www.iri.com/solutions/data-and-database-migration/file-conversion/free-nextform-lite-version

Closing Remarks

Linux users have access to some of the best free and feature-rich applications that are capable of managing and migrating their data efficiently. We have discussed the top 5 free and open-source tools except for IRI NextForm which does not have an open source code. These tools have different functionalities and are perfect to cater to different use cases and requirements hence providing a versatile collection for Linux users.