Advice Request The Best Disk Imaging Software

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Which (If any) Disk Imaging Software do you use?

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I agree Macrium is probably the best free Disk imaging app, also most compatible
AOMEI partition manager failed me so hard once, I would never ever recommend anything from this company

I use norton ghost in hirenboot CD, it has never failed me for years and it compatible with my GPT partition. for sure it is not as good as macrium but i dont wanna change because it doesnt break
 
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Macrium Reflect v6.

Acronis 2017, and AOMEI Backupper (paid) as backups. Except after the first restore with the latter the other day, I got an MFT error ...

ATI is indeed bloated. Am intending to buy Terabyte bundle, and probably Drive Snapshot for it's small size, and portability.
 
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I purchased licenses for all the well known imaging and backup programs including Storagecraft's Shadowprotect 5, EaseUS Todo Backup, Acronis TI and O&O Diskimage. And then I switched to Macrium Reflect in June 2012 and there's been no looking back.

The restores (most important!) are very reliable. MR has saved my skin more times than I care to remember. Get MR..you won't regret it.
 
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Vivek J. Mundkur said:
I purchased licenses for all the well known imaging and backup programs including Storagecraft's Shadowprotect 5, EaseUS Todo Backup, Acronis TI and O&O Diskimage. And then I switched to Macrium Reflect in June 2012 and there's been no looking back.

The restores (most important!) are very reliable. MR has saved my skin more times than I care to remember. Get MR..you won't regret it.
Click to expand...
Did you try even Paragon ?! :)
 
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Macrium Reflect Free 6 has been very reliable here. Testing the new version 7 Free on a 2nd PC, and so far, so good.

I have been using imaging programs for years including Ghost, Acronis, and Windows 7 backup.

I have to say the ease of use and reliability of Macrium makes it my favorite imaging tool so far!

And for a quickie file/folder backup utility I like using FreeFileSync. I use it to make backups of key folders to a secondary drive between images.
FreeFileSync
 
I use Acronis True Image 2017/2018! This is great software!

I also use Anomi Backupper Pro as a secondary piece of software. The free version is just as great! Another great backup software you can use is Macrium Reflect as suggested here.

Disk imaging and backup software is a must - in my opinion. Without great software, it will be hard to recover from massive problems that would otherwise require you to reformat your computer. Think of it like another layer of added security and peace of mind.
 
jelson said:
I use a number of imaging programs.
Secondarly is Drive Snapshot -- also reliable and solid in the extreme -- and it's portable! Very simple to use with lifetime updates. I use to reguarly take system images, e.g., before & after doing MS Updates, installing a trial program, installing low-level drivers (like a printer). Take several images a month and periodically delete old images.

HOWEVER, when the time comes to recommend an imaging program to friends and family, I suggest Macrium Reflect Free because:
  1. there's a free version (no incrementals, no Delta Restore)
  2. easy for novices to use
  3. they make it easy and dead simple to create their WinPE Rescue Media (a big issue for most end-users)
P.S. it's a really good idea to use 2 imaging programs for system images... not putting all your eggs in one basket... just in case... system images + data backups are your insurance policies against catastrophe.
Click to expand...

100% Agree with you here and WISH there would have been a "Write-in" Option on this 2 year old Poll for Drive SnapShot. Drive Snapshot will also run from a WINPE boot disk such as Macrium's restore disk. Just copy/paste snapshot64.exe to a WINPE disk and use the PE file explorer to navigate and run it. Drive Snapshot does differential backups AND incremental backups using Windows Built-in Scheduler.

One of the BEST features of Drive SnapShot is its ability to do block-level imaging while in the Windows environment for any Disk including the GPT/UEFI boot disk with Reserved Partitions. It also includes password-level encryption for your images as well as "Comments" you can add about the Image (Important because I could not remember my own Password from said Image from 6 months ago on a RESTORE to get into Windows). It also has a a built-in ImageFile Viewer which on-the-fly acts as a Mounted Virtual Read-Only Disk -- essentially, a image mounter to drill in and look at the image contents itself.

Snapshot/Setup will NOT copy anything into your Windows or system directory.
Snapshot/Setup will NOT change anything in your system's configuration.
Everything necessary for Snapshot's operation will be dynamically done and undone.
Snapshot is intended to backup your computer in its present state, not to modify this state.
You need NOT to exit other programs to install Snapshot.

The other feature is you can specify Size over 2GB and it always includes a MD5-level Hash for protection which I like, see here:
Image 119.jpg

WINPE Creation using Windows 8/10: Go to start button Run and start typing in >> RecoveryDrive.exe

Just follow the prompts. Here is a tutorial with screenshots. Recovery Drive - Create in Windows 10. This will create a Windows boot environment on a USB stick and then you just copy snapshot.exe (or snapshot64.exe) in the root Folder and place any of your "Clean Install" Images of your PC onto the USB so it's ready to go.
 
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