DriveImage - free hard drive backup program
Website - Freeware - WinXP only
reviewed by OneStep on 27 Oct 2005
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Notes from Clif
Am I lucky? I think so. I sometimes ask the right question at just the right time. This time I asked my friend OneStep to try out something I thought looked cool. He's the right person to ask about this type of program. He lives and breathes hardware, networks, and security.
Clif asked me to have a look some free imaging software, specifically, DriveImage XML V100. It was a timely request as I was making fresh back-ups in readiness for a major system change. A reliable bootable image is a must have for those who understand the importance of a Disaster Recovery Plan.
My first step was to ensure the partitions were clean and the registry correct before creating a Restore Point. Then I downloaded & installed the software. It should be remembered that this software is designed for use with XP only.
Installation is a breeze and though I detest the wording of the EULA, it is common for open-source material released under a GPL. A shortcut will appear on XP’s desktop with nary a whimper. Double-clicking on the icon will launch the application and show Welcome, Backup, Restore, Drive to Drive & Browser tabs.
It is simple, effective and very easy, with adequate help files and hyperlinks designed to lead a user through the suite’s functions step by step, through Wizards.
With limited test drives I chose the simple Backup option to start with. This Backup is only useful if WinDoZe is still operable but the Store of users’ files is corrupted. Once Backed-up to folder created on a separate hard drive, the application can be used to Restore the files on a formatted partition.
The process is quite painless and easy. I elected to enable the RAW & Compression options and to set the application to "Try Volume Shadowing Services First". Once the files were converted to XML and the Back-up process completed, I formatted the source drive, just as would be necessary to be rid of the corrupted files, or file system. Then I used the Restore option to regenerate a perfect replication of the files. But I want a boot image on another hard drive which is startable if/when WinDoZe throws a wobbly BSOD. Unfortunately, this function is lacking from DriveImage. While you can create a ‘perfect’ replica of a hard drive the replica is not bootable – when I tried I got thousands of the word "Grub" (which is one of Linux’s boot-loaders) flashing across the screen. In any case, the time taken will depend on the size of the partition being imaged and, of course, the grunt of the machine doing the work. As an example, my test machine which is an Athlon 3.2.GHz with 1GB DDR400 RAM, took nearly 3 hours when imaging a 30GB partition using IDE hard drives. Without the ability to create a bootable image, DriveImage is seriously lacking. It will back-up and restore your files but it won’t save you from an operating system crash.
Conclusion
While Norton’s Ghost does much the same job as DriveImage, the Symantec product is not free, works in DOS and will only copy or create images of allocated sectors. This means Ghost will copy data only. In contrast, DriveImage has an option whereby you can mirror a disk, sector by sector, including even the un-allocated sectors and can thus create a valid forensic image. This can be a very big plus for those seeking to recover deleted files with utilities such Executive Software’s Undelete. DriveImage also has a useful set of plug-ins, such as a tool for the reconstruction of RAID arrays. A reliable Disaster Recovery Plan & tools are essential components of anyone’s ‘tool-kit’ but, unless I missed something, DriveImage is not the tool to resurrect a crashed XP system.
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DriveImage XML is an easy to use and reliable program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives.
The program allows you to:
Backup logical drives and partitions to image files
Browse these images, view and extract files
Restore these images to the same or a different drive
Copy directly from drive to drive
