PHP Update Causing Website Clone Issues

this tool stores these clones in their systems – not yours

Well that’s interesting. If you’re OK with that, do as suggested and contact Updraft’s support.

FWIW, I’m personally not too keen about such a scheme for my own work. If you feel similarly, consider using some other plugin to clone your site on your own server. Something like WP Staging or similar.

In fact, it’s not really that difficult to manually clone a site. No plugin necessary. Copying all of the files to another directory is straight forward enough if you’re comfortable using FTP. You can then export/import the DB tables into a new DB via the phpMyAdmin tool, usually accessed through your hosting account or cPanel. Edit the new site’s wp-config.php file so that it connects to the new DB. You can use the same DB user, password, and salts, but for better security these ought to be changed as well.

Slightly off topic, but since you appear to be willing to learn new things, I want to encourage it by pointing you in the right direction…

Learning to use FTP is a good thing for anyone managing a website. Most everyone I know uses Filezilla for this. Configuring it to connect to your server is the most difficult part. Given access to the right information, it’s not that difficult. Many hosts have documentation for doing this that’s specific to their servers. Some might even have a wizard-like tool to help you do this.

Once connected, usage is very similar to using your computer’s file manager (like Explorer or Finder). A good first task to perform is to backup your /wp-content/uploads/ directory to your local computer.

Learning about DB tables is not essential, but having an understanding of how WP saves information will make you a better site manager. More than anyone really needs to know can be found in the old Codex. Reading enough to have a general understanding would be adequate. If you get as far as the Table Details section, there’s no need to go any further.

You can explore your actual DB with the phpMyAdmin app, usually accessed through your hosting account or cPanel. It’s safe enough to just look, but don’t actually alter any of the data. This is the app that would be used to manually export/import data. It’s at least worth learning to export a database since this is how you’d manually backup your DB. There are plugins that will do this for you, so it’s not an essential skill, but once again the knowledge makes you a better site manager.

This may all seem overwhelming. Don’t be discouraged, you don’t need to know all of this right away. It’s enough to know these tools exist and how to access them. You can learn more about them later on as the inclination or need arises.