One example method includes powering off a replica VM, taking a snapshot of an OS disk of a source VM associated with the replica VM, taking a snapshot of an OS disk of the replica VM, generating a list of blocks that includes all blocks of the source VM OS disk that have changed since a preceding cloning or snapshot process and further includes all blocks of the replica VM OS disk that have changed since the preceding cloning or snapshot process, and performing an override of the replica VM disk by writing, to the replica VM OS disk, the respective source VM OS disk values for each block in the list of blocks.