This is intended as a high level over view of the differences between these two types of clones discussed in an earlier post about Proxmox templates.
Understanding Storage: Full Clones vs. Linked Clones
When you start cloning VMs from your template, Proxmox gives you two ‘Mode” options: Full Clone and Linked Clone. Both create a new virtual machine based on your template, but they handle storage very differently. Understanding this difference helps you choose the right approach for your setup.
Full Clone
A full clone is an exact, independent copy of the original template. All the virtual disks are duplicated in full, which means:
- The clone has its own complete copy of the data.
- You can safely delete or modify the original template without affecting the clone.
- Each clone takes up the same amount of disk space as the original VM.
For example, if your template uses 20 GB of disk space, every full clone will also use 20 GB (even if it’s thin-provisioned at first). Full clones are ideal when you want total independence between VMs — for example, production servers or machines that will diverge significantly over time.
Linked Clone
A linked clone is a lightweight copy that depends on the original template. Instead of duplicating the entire virtual disk, it creates a snapshot-based link to the template’s storage. This means:
- The clone uses much less disk space, since it only stores the changes made after cloning.
- It’s much faster to create than a full clone.
- The clone cannot exist without the original template — if the template or its storage is deleted, the linked clone will break.
- As the clones are used regularly they will begin to diverge and the space saving benefits will being to diminish but you will still need to maintain the original virtual disk from the template.
Linked clones are great for testing, lab environments, or short-lived development machines where storage efficiency and speed matter more than independence.
Choosing Between Them
- Use Full Clone when you need a stable, standalone VM that won’t rely on the template.
- Use Linked Clone when you want to save storage space and quickly spin up multiple temporary systems.
In most cases, it’s fine to use linked clones for experimentation and playing and full clones for anything that needs to persist or run in production.