| Title: Drive Image 1.0 | Vendor: PowerQuest Corporation | Price: $39.95. |
| Requirements:Windows 3.x, Windows 95, or Windows NT, OS/2 and DOS 5.x. | ||
| Date Published: February 1998 | Reviewers: Steve Martin & Joe Kluepfel | |
This review was written by Joe Kluepfel and Steve Martin, after the use of Drive Image ver 1. Steve asked Joe to write the review so that the novice and experienced user would both have input. The first part of the article is from Joe's perspective and the second part is Steve's.
Joe Says:Drive Image is a tool that is used to copy files from one hard drive to another in the fastest possible method. The software creates an image of one hard drive for transplanting to another hard drive. This image is a compressed file that not only contains everything on the drive, including operating system, applications, and data, but also everything about the drive, including size and location of partitions and the types of files that are on them.
Images can be also be put on removable media such as a Zip or Jaz drives, but users should be careful when using an external drive to store a hard drive image file. When the old hard drive is removed, the operating system and the device drivers for the external drive go with it, so before beginning the process, you should create a DOS boot diskette containing the drivers for the external drive.
PowerQuest also markets Drive Image as a backup tool, but there is some danger in backing up the entire structure and contents of a hard drive to a single compressed file. For transferring operating systems, partition information, and data from an old hard drive to an upgrade, however, Drive Image is a great tool.
We recently moved all the files from one 2G hard drive, to a new 6.5G hard drive, in less than a half hour. Imagine doing that using Zip drives or a tape backup system? It would have taken five hours. The operation is simple, install the software, connect a cable (NOTE: the IDE cable has two connectors for Drives on it) from the old drive to the new one, hook up the spare power plug, and following the simple directions, command the transfer of all the files. As said before, make a boot-up disk before starting.
I had the opportunity to read Joe's review first and I would like to clarify some of the things about the use of Drive Image.
1: Connecting the drives is easy to do and while they can be on 1 cable they can also be on a secondary IDE Channel, (if you do not know what that means, then maybe you shouldn't be playing inside the computer).
2: Making a Drive Image for back-up is not a bad Idea, but I would recommend doing it when the machine is new and then when there are major changes. Copy this Image to a tape and save it for emergencies. (you will need the drivers to load the tape drive, but at least you will have an exact replica of the drive)
3: There are two other products from PowerQuest that can help you moving from one hard drive to the other. One is Drive Image Professional, more expensive and used for the duping to multiple workstations, the other is DriveCopy, which has more limitations and did not seem as fast when I worked with it. For the Price differential (Drive Image $69.95 vs. Drive Copy $29.95) I would recommend DriveImage. You can copy to a smaller drive and the making of a Disk Image for later restoration is well worth the $40. These are MSRP Prices and the real world price is about $10 less.
4. Partition Magic is not included in the package, but it's technology for resizing partitions while copying them is included. I love this product, as a matter of fact, I love the entire PowerQuest product Line, maybe I am biased by the fact that I am constantly installing new hard Drives for clients and they usually want the old drive to be replicated on the new. This can be done using the Fdisk command and Formatting the drive, then copying the entire hard drive to the new one. This takes some time though and usually I have to verify the entire thing. The Client Pays for my time, but I almost feel guilty charging for the time I sit there twiddling my thumbs while the copying goes on. Joe had said using the tape back-up feature or zip disks could take hours and even Drive to Drive File Copying can take a few hours, (getting the hidden files is another problem too). Using the DriveImage it did take about 30 minutes to copy approximately 2gb of data in 5 partitions to a new hard drive, with certification of the copying done also.
What you need to do. Well as with any product that plays with your hard drive making a backup is important. The difference here being Drive Image makes no changes to your old drive, it copies information and places it on the new drive or partition. Installation is a multi-step process, insert the CD and make a few choices, Install the program or make Floppies to install it. If you install, it will offer to make (and you should accept) a bootable diskette. DriveImage runs in a DOS session (it does support OS/2, Windows NT, both versions of Windows 95* and Linux, Unix and Netware). Reboot with the bootable diskette and off you go. Decide whether to make a image file or do a disk to disk copy, the partitions can be left at their current size or by using PartitionMagic Technology they can be reduced in size if the data does not use the entire partition. Using the graphical interface is easy and pretty self-explanatory, the manual is helpful, if you decide to read it. After you are done, remove the old hard drive and restart the machine and you will not notice the difference except the new drive has more available space or the failing drive is gone. This could put me out of business.
DriveImage Professional allows for even more flexibility but it is almost $700, quite a bit more expensive and not needed for the home user. I hope this dual review has given you the information you need to decide which product is for you.