PowerQuest Drive Image 7 review

There's almost nothing worth doing that doesn't involve a certain amount of risk.

If you've ever decided to upgrade your version of Windows, or move the partitions on your hard disk, you'll know what I mean. Choose the wrong option and there's the horrible chance you'll wipe your operating system and all your data. This can cause feelings of anxiety and frustration.

To avoid this, you should regularly back up your data and operating system. Windows XP contains a feature that lets you do this - but if Windows has been wiped, that won't be much help! A more secure option is to use a backup program such as PowerQuest's Drive Image 7.

Drive Image provides a complete backup capability, letting you copy your operating system, programs and settings as part of a single backup file that's an exact, compressed image of the drive or partition. Unlike its competitor, Norton Ghost, Drive Image lets your create a copy of the partition on which Windows is installed - the so-called 'bootable' partition - without restarting into the simple DOS operating system. The backup process is simple, takes only a few steps and is managed by an easy-to-follow wizard. You don't have to be an expert in disk management either. Unlike Ghost, Drive Image lets you save your backup file wherever you like, even to the partition being backed up. In the short term this is convenient, but if the partition then gets wiped, then your backup will be wiped with it.

The image file created is much smaller than the size of the drive it represents, as it uses compression and doesn't bother backing up empty areas of the disk. Backing up a 20GB hard disk containing 9GB data took about 10 minutes, and created an image file of 6GB. If you plan to store the image on several CDs, you can choose to save it as several smaller files, which can vary in size from 100MB to about 9GB. If you feel the need to backup regularly, Drive Image can automate this process, backing up regularly at a time most convenient to you.

Once you have your image file, you don't just forget about it until you need to restore your entire hard disk. It can be viewed using Drive Image's Backup Image File Browser. This uses 'V2i' (virtual volume imaging) to mount the images as virtual drives, and allows you to recover individual files and folders. If problems with your system prevent Windows starting, you can restore the backup by starting up using the bootable DriveImage CD.

The one downside to Drive Image 7 is that it will only work under Windows 2000 or XP. If you have another system with an older version of Windows, you can use Drive Image 2002, which comes free with this product. That aside, Drive Image is an effective, easy to use and flexible backup program that easily deserves its Buyer Recommended Award.

Mike Price

Author: Mike Price