Cloning an Oracle home involves creating a copy of the Oracle home and then configuring it for a new environment.

If you are performing multiple Oracle Database installations, then you may want to use cloning to create each Oracle home, because copying files from an existing Oracle Database installation takes less time than creating a new version of them. This method is also useful if the Oracle home that you are cloning has had patches applied to it. When you clone the Oracle home, the new Oracle home has the patch updates.

• Cloning an Oracle Database Home Using an Image File
  Learn how to clone an Oracle Database home using the -createGoldImage option.
• Cloning an Oracle Database Home Using clone.pl
  Learn how to clone an Oracle home using the clone.pl script.