Comments on: 3 Best Free Hard Disk Imaging Software

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 04 Mar 2023 00:02:03 +0000

In reply to Andy. I've used macrium many times before but their insistence on Windows internals is ridiculous and makes things overly complex and irksome. Ive since abandoned my license after a year.

By: blueicetwice

blueicetwice — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 21:12:02 +0000

Foxclone, easy to use and understand !! :<)) It also has excellent
documentation for users. It is the only imaging and cloning software
I use. I highly recommend it for all.

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 15 Jan 2022 00:16:52 +0000

Any particular reason you did not review foxclone or did you not do your homework?

By: Forrest Salfen

Forrest Salfen — Thu, 13 Jan 2022 14:48:15 +0000

I use Macrium Reflect, and have for years. There is a free version and several other flavors, all priced reasonably. Im a retired IT Infrastructure Dept Manager and first learned about disk imaging in 2001 when Power Quest released its v2 i Protector Desktop Disk Imaging, which i immediately had instslled on all IT employees under my direction. A server edition soon followed which was great, and installed on all my various Windows Servers. In my Server Room I dedicated a server to do nothing but gather and store weekly OS Partition images of every server (25) we used at the time. I included the technology in my corporate Disaster Recovery SOX requirements. My Dept was the first in San Diego and SoCal to use it for DR, with many of my peers following suit. Unfortunately, as was SOP back then, Peter Norton and Symantec purchased Power Quest. Every future release became more and more bloated with Symantec foot print accomplied with MUCH higher pricing of every version accompanied with yet more and more Symantec bells and whistles totally unnecessary. Eventually i made a change to rid my Dept of anything Symantec.

As far as Macrium Reflect is concerned, I am only familiar with their free and paid versions, as i have since retired from MY IT career. I am diligent in creating regular images of the OS partitions on all my personal systems. Over the years since i began using Reflect, on three separate occations i can recall, i had to reimage my systems after a bad Microsoft Update as well as one system where a malware slipped by, corrupting the OS. In all occations, the reimage took less than ten minutes, averaging 7 minutes image restore. So my systems were back up and running normally with minimum downtime.

Reflect includes creating what they call a “Rescue Boot” USB emergency boot into WinRE with network connectivity to find and restore the last known good image. No problem. l occur due to user neglect to perform images of their personal computers regularly and before any major OS upgrades or major Application installations.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 13:55:32 +0000

In reply to Adi. Can clone to smaller drive if you shrink partition before making image. It works but it is a pain.

By: Adi

Adi — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 10:54:06 +0000

Probably not an issue for most users but one thing I’ve found with these is that you can’t restore images to a drive smaller than the source. Particularly of recent due to components (drives) being in short supply there’s often a time I need to shift an OS over to a spare drive which is a much smaller capacity. Nightmare on Clonezilla.

By: Blender Fox

Blender Fox — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 07:25:48 +0000

I can wholeheartedly endorse CloneZilla. I’ve been using it for years, and not had any issues with it. The only time I had issues, was due to my own machine’s hardware failing, and me thinking the cause was CloneZilla (it wasn’t)