You should never clone from lower instance to higher instance(Here high refers to prod and lower refers dev). It is not a best practice to do that unless you have very strong reason to do that.
The best approach to your question would be capture all customizations in an UpdateSet and later on move them to Prod environment.
Best way to move customizations from one environment to other would be using Update Sets. Data can be exported and imported using the export and import functionality.
Yes you can clone dev to prod.I assume you do not have a TEST/UAT environment.
If this is a fresh migration meaning production is not live yet then a clone is suggestible. This will mitigate risk of unexpected issue sn production.
The best way to move changes from DEV to PROD is the use of update set and it is not advisable to clone from DEV to PROD. Can you tell us the reason why you want to clone from DEV to PROD?
Just trying to find the best way to migrate the implementation i did in dev to prod. As i have processes tables and data that i want in the prod instance
