{"id":111,"date":"2013-03-09T07:02:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T07:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/?p=111"},"modified":"2013-09-19T18:27:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T18:27:39","slug":"some-thoughts-on-drive-imaging-software","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/some-thoughts-on-drive-imaging-software\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Thoughts on Drive Imaging Software"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Taken from the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techsupportalert.com\/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm\">&#8220;Best Free Drive Imaging Program&#8221;<\/a> &lt; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techsupportalert.com\/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm\">http:\/\/www.techsupportalert.com\/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm<\/a> &gt; at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techsupportalert.com\">TechSupportAlert.com<\/a> and augmented with details from the tools&#8217; websites.<\/p>\n<p>Recommendation: I have been using <strong>Paragon Backup and Recovery Free<\/strong> frequently and it has been reliable and has all the features i need.\u00a0 It will clone the working system.<\/p>\n<p>I have used Drive Image XML, PING, and Clonezilla with success.\u00a0 I did not try Macrium Reflect Free because you can not restore to another drive unless you buy their commercial version.<\/p>\n<p>Note if you&#8217;re imaging a drive you have already removed from a system, a sata-to-esata cable plugged into a esata port on a computer is very fast (you still have to provide stata power to the drive, somehow).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<table border=\"1\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>attribute<\/th>\n<th>Macrium Reflect Free Edition<\/th>\n<th>Paragon Backup and Recovery (Advanced) Free<\/th>\n<th>Drive Image XML<\/th>\n<th>PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)<\/th>\n<th>Clonezilla<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>registration required?<\/th>\n<td>no<\/td>\n<td bgcolor=\"#200\">yes, register on web, get email with prod key and sn<\/td>\n<td>no<\/td>\n<td>no<\/td>\n<td>no<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>clone &#8211; raw sector by sector image<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>yes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>clone a working, running system<\/th>\n<td>yes. both?<\/td>\n<td>both?<\/td>\n<td>yes (&#8220;uses Microsoft&#8217;s Volume Shadow Services (VSS)&#8221;<br \/>\n\/ both?<\/td>\n<td>offline boot<\/td>\n<td>offline boot<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>clone directly to another drive<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>called &#8220;Drive to Drive&#8221;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>clone to dest<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>Any backup destination &#8211; including external storages, CD\/DVD\/Blu-ray discs, network as well as the secured hidden partition (Backup Capsule)<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>attribute<\/th>\n<th>Macrium<\/th>\n<th>Paragon<\/th>\n<th>Drive Image XML<\/th>\n<th>PING<\/th>\n<th>Clonezilla<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>file backup<\/th>\n<td>no<\/td>\n<td>not listed in feature list<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>mount image file<\/th>\n<td>yes<\/td>\n<td>yes<\/td>\n<td>yes<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>restore file from image<\/th>\n<td>yes via mounting<\/td>\n<td>yes via mounting<\/td>\n<td>yes via mounting<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th rowspan=\"2\">recovery<\/th>\n<td>&#8220;Linux Rescue CD&#8221; or &#8220;Windows&#8221; PE (Pre-install Environment) Recovery<\/td>\n<td>linux(\/dos from website) based bootable CD (&#8220;Create bootable USB Flash drive, CD or DVD&#8221; &#8211;from website)<\/td>\n<td>tutorial and plugin to do Bart PE yourself<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td colspan=\"5\">from the comments, from the <a title=\"Gizmo's Freeware\" href=\"http:\/\/techsupportalert.com\" target=\"_blank\">techsupportalert.com<\/a> author: &#8220;And if you can only get an optical booting disk [ie no USB boot] with any of these, there are numerous programs out there to turn that into a bootable USB drive, I&#8217;ve had the best luck with Unetbootin, YUMI, and Universal USB Installer. YUMI is great for a multiboot USB device, it is the first multibooting USB creator that works most of the time, and it has worked with almost everything I&#8217;ve tried so far. Hope this helps and good luck.&#8221;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>attribute<\/th>\n<th>Macrium<\/th>\n<th>Paragon<\/th>\n<th>Drive Image XML<\/th>\n<th>PING<\/th>\n<th>Clonezilla<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>partition editing<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>very basic<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>time (8GB)<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>9 min<\/td>\n<td>28 min<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>differential backups<\/th>\n<td>no<\/td>\n<td>yes<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>restore to different \/ smaller? partitions<\/th>\n<td bgcolor=\"red\">There is NO Restore to dissimilar hardware in free version!<\/td>\n<td>yes, even smaller<\/td>\n<td>different drive, same size or larger<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>virtualize system disks<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>yes<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>backup is a hidden full system mirror that can take over should the original become damaged<\/th>\n<td><\/td>\n<td>called &#8216;Backup Capsule&#8217;<\/td>\n<td><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<th>attribute<\/th>\n<th>Macrium<\/th>\n<th>Paragon<\/th>\n<th>Drive Image XML<\/th>\n<th>PING<\/th>\n<th>Clonezilla<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taken from the article &#8220;Best Free Drive Imaging Program&#8221; &lt; http:\/\/www.techsupportalert.com\/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm &gt; at TechSupportAlert.com and augmented with details from the tools&#8217; websites. Recommendation: I have been using Paragon Backup and Recovery Free frequently and it has been reliable and has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/some-thoughts-on-drive-imaging-software\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}