Any suggestions on drive imaging software?

[G+_Bill Johnson]

Any suggestions on drive imaging software? I’m looking for something that will boot from usb or cd and has some forgiveness for drive errors? Clonezilla keeps giving me errors when trying to create a image file.

[G+_Glenn Ford]

Acronis true image is pretty good.

[G+_Jason Perry]

I second Acronis, works great, and will boot from a USB or CD.

[G+_Rounak Dutta]

"Macrum reflect" works most of the time if that doesn't work "MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional Edition" always works in spite of the stupid name.

[G+_Juscelino Acevedo]

I am no Clonezilla expert, although I love using it, but I am under the impression that you can tell Clonezilla to skip errors. Am I wrong?

[G+_Jonathan Bennett]

The best solution I've found is a Linux boot disk and ddrescue.

[G+_Jason Brown]

Acronis with universal restore

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/business/universal-restore/

acronis.com - Acronis Universal Restore

[G+_Damien Wessling]

I use Image for Windows. Pretty reliable plus you can image your primary drive while it's still in use. I'd run SPINRITE on your drive to ensure you're as error free prior to performing your backup.

 

terabyteunlimited.com - TeraByte Unlimited :: TeraByte Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite :: Image for Windows

[G+_Jeff Gros]

Yes, you can skip errors in clonezilla but that doesn't mean you're home free. Sometimes when you successfully make the image it fails during the check! Then when I retry the image/check procedure a second time, then it works. Something in the image process for clonezilla is not quite robust.

 

I'm still waiting for Steve Gibson to make a backup utility that includes spinrite (or to update spinrite to do GPT partitions for that matter). However, he has mentioned some imaging programs on the show. I've never tried them, but I'd like to think many of his listeners have..

 

See link for his recommended programs.

wiki.twit.tv - Steve's Software Picks - The Official TWiT Wiki

[G+_Geoff Galley]

Acronis is the best I also use drive snapshot.

[G+_John Sullivan]

Whatever software you use, you need to test it by "Restoring" the image back to a hard drive, and making sure that restore will boot. Without doing that, any image that you make is of questionable value. How do you know it will work when you need it?

 

I use the free version of Macrium Reflect, and can recommend it, but if you are getting errors there may be a major problem with your hard drive. You can try running the built in Windows error checking and correcting tool to see if that will fix any errors.

 

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have good backups of your important files from that hard drive to two or more locations, preferably to more than one type of media (dvd, external drive, etc.)

[G+_Ben Reese]

Not an option for everyone, but I just use the Windows backup utility which creates a VHDX. Windows will boot natively to a VHD/VHDX, so it's pretty simple to have restored within an hour.

 

This is the first time I've seen this particular tutorial, but it's more or less what I do - starting with "Attach VHD" from Step 3.

These steps assume Windows PE (which most don't have), but it will work from any Admin command line. I start the Windows installer, proceed up to the screen where you choose your drive to install Windows on, then hit Ctrl + F10.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/boot-to-vhd--native-boot--add-a-virtual-hard-disk-to-the-boot-menu

[G+_Don Jenkins]

Acronis is available from Western Digital to use for free as long as one of the drives is a WD drive. It's on the WD site under the software section. Its limited in the sense it will only run from a boot device. Ive run the ISO from usb drives and cd/dvd. I've even cloned a brand new Dell server (recovery, os, and data partitions) from a single drive to a RAID 5 array (Dell mis-configured the server).