BIOS: Technology Means Business

In home and small office environments where data is becoming increasingly more important, Drive Image 7.0 is a powerful and cost-effective backup solution that can be used without leaving Windows. It can't create images of servers, so it's not an all-encompassing office solution, but it's ideal for backing up individual PCs.

Pros: Runs entirely under Windows; includes Drive Image 2002
Cons: High system requirements; supports Windows 2000 and XP only

Drive Image 7.0 may seem like a one trick pony because its only function is to copy an exact image of a hard disk partition for safe storage, but it's surprising how many different uses this simple safety measure actually has.

You can use the software to comprehensively backup your system, including the OS, programs, files and settings. You can also use it when upgrading a hard disk or to save different configurations and quickly switch between them. Scheduling allows you to choose to backup a hard disk immediately, or schedule repeat backups. Drive Image 7.0 can also be used to install different operating systems onto a single PC, allowing you to run various iterations of Windows, Linux, BeOS or whatever.

Drive Image 7.0 installs easily enough, although it does require 256MB of system memory and a copy of Microsoft's .NET Framework, if not already present. This is supplied on the installation disc if needed. The program opens to a menu window, offering Backup, Restore files and Restore drive as main options, as well as the option to copy an image of one hard disk to another. Unlike previous versions, you can now restore individual files or selected folders to a system, which is useful if you have a corrupted application.

By default, Drive Image 7.0 compresses drive images by around a third, but there are two higher levels of compression available offering a maximum compression of around 50 per cent. You can save an image uncompressed, too. The destination of a backup can be another hard disk, including external USB 2.0 and FireWire devices, a recordable or rewritable CD or DVD, or a network drive.

The software's Copy Drives feature lets you copy the contents of one hard disk to another, including the operating system, applications and data. Copied partitions are expanded to occupy the same proportion of the new hard disk as they do on the original hard disk. For example, if you had two 1GB FAT 32 partitions on a 2GB hard disk and you copied both partitions to a new 8GB hard disk, each partition would be expanded to 4GB on the new hard disk. You can choose to copy an entire hard disk or selected partitions.

The software uses PowerQuest's SmartSector imaging technology, which is an alternative technology to file-based copying solutions. PowerQuest says SmartSector offers improved performance, more precise hard disk imaging, better preservation of Windows hard disk optimisations, and more flexibility. SmartSector reads the entire file allocation table or master file table into memory. Next, it scans the disk, imaging only those sectors that have data allocated to them. This process should eliminate any slowdown that may occur during the copying process if the hard disk is fragmented.

Backup in real life is reasonably quick - the 3GB partition we backed up took around 12 minutes to compress and copy to an external FireWire drive. You can restore an image within Windows or, in the case of disaster recovery, by booting from the Drive Image 7.0 CD-ROM into the PowerQuest Recovery Environment (PQRE) and running a restore wizard.

Two versions of Drive Image are supplied on the CD-ROM: Drive Image 7.0 for Windows 2000 and XP, and Drive Image 2002 for earlier versions. You only get the new features like saving images to DVD or to USB and FireWire devices with Drive Image 7.0, but it's useful to have the earlier version, particularly if you run several PCs. Drive Image 7.0 does not support imaging servers. To create images of servers, take a look at PowerQuest's V2i Protector.

System requirements:
OS: Windows XP, 2000 Professional (SP2)
CPU: Pentium compatible or faster
Memory: 256MB
Hard disk: 45MB
CD-ROM: Any speed

Links:
Drive Image 7.0 Web site