 Disk Imaging Software, What else is there? |
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 Jun 28 2007, 12:31 PM Post
#1 | |
| MSFN Master  Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64   |
I've been tasked with testing other disk imaging solutions to see if we stay with what we are using, Ghost, or move to something with more better features less expensive, you know the drill. So far I have found the following products, some freeware, some commercial. Are there any I have missed? I am only concerned with utilities to create disk images for windows based machines, disk to disk cloning is not a requirement but it is a benefit, image creation is a requiement. If they do others that is fine. And if we want to make this the find them all repository I will gladly add more to the list that serve other functionality and break the lists up. When my project is finished I'll post the resulting functionality comparison here for all to enjoy. Disk Imaging Products:
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| Jun 28 2007, 01:39 PM Post
#2 | |
| Advanced Member  Group: Members Posts: 399 Joined: 5-December 06 Member No.: 117675 OS: none  |
what about Imagex that is in the WAIK and on the Vista DVD? It would have been nicer if they hadnt forget to flush the console buffers (you cant read the console output until it exits). But so far you get it for free from MS and the save/restore times are not that bad. |
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| Jun 28 2007, 01:55 PM Post
#3 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 |
Had it and forgot to put it on the list. Thanks.
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| Jun 28 2007, 02:19 PM Post
#4 | |
| msfn is a friend of mine!  Group: Normal Sponsors Posts: 1727 Joined: 24-March 04 From: Wales Member No.: 16512  |
haven't used it, but O&O have one http://www.oo-software.com/home/en/products/oodiskimage/ looking forward to your results  personally i'm an acronis user |
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| Jun 28 2007, 02:21 PM Post
#5 | |
| Member Group: Members Posts: 104 Joined: 11-November 05 Member No.: 79406 |
I don't know if this is the area you are going to be working in, but Kroll Ontrack has a dos (6.2) based disk image tool. It is typically shipped as "software" when you buy a retail HD. Maxtor has MaxBlast (by Ontrack), WD has DataLifeGuard (by Ontrack), Seagate has ?? (by Ontrack). I understand that the DOS versions included on the CDs are all just versions of Kroll Ontrack's dos-based image copier and restorer. They just do a sector by sector copy (sector 0x0123456... source HD gets copied to sector 0x123456... target HD), so source HD and target HD need to be healthy, and target HD needs to be larger than source HD. It is reported to be fast because it uses only BIOS. If I may make a request along this line -- I'd love to figure out eventually how to add a kiosk feature to my w98se. On shutdown, reboot to dos 6.2, run an image program, and shutdown. On next bootup, I would be back to c:\ (OS and programs), and it would be at the pristine image condition. All email, personal files, etc. would be on D: to whatever. But C-drive would remain virus free. Do any of the above image programs have a image restore, kiosk capability? This post has been edited by Molecule: Jun 28 2007, 02:29 PM |
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| Jun 28 2007, 02:25 PM Post
#6 | |
| MSFN SuperB  Group: Software Developers Posts: 5031 Joined: 23-July 04 From: Italy Member No.: 25215 OS: none  |
@IcemanND You seem to have made a good "harvest" , I didn't check but here there should be a few more:http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16534 I am cross-linking that thread to yours. jaclaz This post has been edited by jaclaz: Jun 28 2007, 02:26 PM |
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| Jun 28 2007, 03:07 PM Post
#7 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 |
@Molecule - I don't know of any feature like this in imaging utilities, but there are products like deepfreeze by faronics, and I don't know if it is around anymore HDSherrif (may not have the name quite right). That freeze either partitions or whole hard drives and after any changes are made a reboot returns them to their pristine state.
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| Jun 29 2007, 03:32 AM Post
#8 | |
| MSFN SuperB Group: Software Developers Posts: 5031 Joined: 23-July 04 From: Italy Member No.: 25215 OS: none | OT: @Molecule The idea of imaging forth and back the system is not, in my view, the best way for "kiosk mode". It would be better if you used one of the various ways to boot Win9x from a RAMDISK. Alternatively, and maybe even easier, you can experiment with the grub4dos features of the --mem command. Of course the machine needs to have enough RAM for it. @IcemanND Sorry didn't intend to hijack the thread. jaclaz |
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| Jun 29 2007, 05:51 AM Post
#9 | |
| Member Group: Members Posts: 264 Joined: 12-June 06 Member No.: 98668  | QUOTE (Molecule @ Jun 28 2007, 09:21 PM)  Maxtor has MaxBlast (by Ontrack), WD has DataLifeGuard (by Ontrack), Seagate has ?? (by Ontrack). Seagate and Maxtor also have Diskwizard, a free cut down version of Acronis Trueimage 10: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=98368 |
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| Jun 29 2007, 07:51 AM Post
#10 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 |
Here is the list of items I will be using to compare products, any others I missing? Cost Features
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| Jun 29 2007, 08:24 AM Post
#11 | |
| Advanced Member Group: Members Posts: 346 Joined: 5-October 05 Member No.: 75761 |
You mention drive cloning encryption. I presume that you are talking about commercial disk encryption software vs. MSoft disk encryption whereby the whole disk is encrypted and a password is needed on bootup before Windows even starts to boot. I also assume you'll be evaluating the disk imaging of these encrypted disks too. This wouldn't be the case whereby the file or the directory would be encrypted with the rest of the files/directories remaining unencrypted since this is a trivial case. This post has been edited by mikesw: Jun 29 2007, 08:26 AM |
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| Jun 29 2007, 08:46 AM Post
#12 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 |
Actually I was referring to the ability to encrypt the image itself. Imaging encrypted disks though possible is not recommended by the vendors I have dealt with, or you have to do it without compression so a 40gb drive results ina 40gb image and you can't resize it to a larger drive. I know this is the cse with Utimaco's SafeGuard Easy. I'm not sure what would happen with EFS, if the drive was fully cloned it would not likely be a problem, creating an image may pose issues. |
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| Jun 29 2007, 11:28 AM Post
#13 | |
| Member Group: Members Posts: 104 Joined: 11-November 05 Member No.: 79406 | QUOTE (IcemanND @ Jun 29 2007, 07:51 AM) Here is the list of items I will be using to compare products, any others I missing? Does the image include, and will the image restore, all date information on subdirs when they are "restored?" -- obviously same for files too? (Possibly called "forensics" -- but forensics might include much more than just preserving/restoring file/subdir dates.) In some cases I have so many subdirs under a dir I need to sort them by date of origination to locate a file (I can remember "about when" better than I can "a specific name"). ---- QUOTE (uid0 @ Jun 29 2007, 05:51 AM) Seagate and Maxtor also have Diskwizard, a free cut down version of Acronis Trueimage 10 I was thinking of the 1.44 FD DOS versions. (I can't imagine how a restore could be considered secure when MS Windows is running.) This post has been edited by Molecule: Jun 29 2007, 11:41 AM |
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| Jun 29 2007, 12:07 PM Post
#14 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 | QUOTE (Molecule @ Jun 29 2007, 01:28 PM) Does the image include, and will the image restore, all date information on subdirs when they are "restored?" -- obviously same for files too? (Possibly called "forensics" -- but forensics might include much more than just preserving/restoring file/subdir dates.) In some cases I have so many subdirs under a dir I need to sort them by date of origination to locate a file (I can remember "about when" better than I can "a specific name"). Forensic imaging takes an image of the entire drive including blank space, normally only used to image to another drive rather than to an image since it is a exact 1:1 copy of the drive. So we'll call what you are after date/time stamp preservation. Anyone have a good way to score ease of use? This is something that can be very subjective. |
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| Jun 29 2007, 10:01 PM Post
#15 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 |
Wow, I'm surprised by the number of products out there when you start looking. Which I am now going to stop doing, if anyone else knows of a product not listed post it and I will add it to the list up until the end of the day on Monday. Anything after that will not likely be reviewed but I will add to the list so we can have a single repository of imaging solutions.
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| Jun 30 2007, 12:28 AM Post
#16 | |
| Newbie Group: Members Posts: 22 Joined: 8-November 03 From: Brisbane, Australia Member No.: 9204 |
Thanks for the list something i need as i have an Asus P5K Deluxe P35 chipset board and Acronis Trumeimage 10 doesn't work with ICH9R controller. Asked Acronis and they said I'd have to wait until Trueimage 11 is released for P35 chipset support!
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| Jul 1 2007, 04:05 PM Post
#17 | |
| MSFN SuperB Group: Software Developers Posts: 5031 Joined: 23-July 04 From: Italy Member No.: 25215 OS: none |
A very small DOS one: http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/todisk.html QUOTE TOdisk is a command line utility which perform TRUE sector clone, so it can handle different file system such as FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2 ... etc. TOdisk embedded the mature and famous ZLIB compression library, user can adjust compression size and speed according to their needs. The command line parameters can be simple (simply clone the whole hard disk), but also can be very powerful, for example, it can do batch jobs, just clone a certain number of sectors, multiple image with password ... etc. Still ALPHA, but after all, that's was testing is about  I guess that it could be very useful for a USB device (or even floppy) DISKMAN http://www.diskman.co.uk/about.aspx QUOTE Diskman 4 is the most powerful, stable and refined release yet available: Full script language and support for batch file operation to simplify system roll out tasks Clearer command structure Many new commands Backup and restore VFAT (Windows 9x/NT/2000) Long File Names (LFN) Archive compatible with DOSLFNBK, the leading LFN backup utility Delete, create and manipulate disk partitions Quickly format FAT volumes as FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32 Support for hard disks/partitions up to 2TB Support for disk image files up to 2GB (4GB coming soon) Support for spanned image files up to 2TB Securely erase either volumes or entire drives Mount and manipulate disk images (such as those created for Rawrite) Export volumes or entire physical drives for later restore. Quickly copy every file into image files for easy backup and later restore. Browse FAT volumes quickly and easily Directly edit disks at the sector level Support for all BIOS supported disks, DOS supported drives and Image files Help repair disks after a virus attack or rescue critical data Backup and restore CMOS memory images, including latest 256 byte chipsets. Embryonic support for NTFS Free for noncommercial use. Format32 is the first Diskman derivative to support MS-Windows NT/2000/XP: >Native Windows support (Diskman4 supports Windows with DMHOST.DLL) >Ultrafast formatting of FAT volumes Exceeds the 32GB limit imposed by Microsoft on FAT32 volumes is a great app, but until version 5 comes out, NTFS is not or poorly supported....  jaclaz This post has been edited by jaclaz: Jul 1 2007, 04:14 PM |
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| Jul 2 2007, 05:46 AM Post
#18 | |
| msfn is a friend of mine! Group: Normal Sponsors Posts: 1727 Joined: 24-March 04 From: Wales Member No.: 16512 |
i notice you've split them into two categories, many of the ones in the imaging section also have a disk cloning option too |
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| Jul 2 2007, 09:19 AM Post
#19 | |
| MSFN Master Group: Super Moderator Posts: 2963 Joined: 24-September 03 From: Indiana Member No.: 7346 OS: Windows 7 x64 |
@beldd - Yes that is true but the ones in the disk cloning category only do cloning, and for my initial specs did not qualify, but since they were brought up I added them to the list. While it is not likely a complete list it is the longest list of this type of software I know of. And more than I could find using your typical search engine. When the comparison is done the imaging software that does cloning will be noted in the final report. Hoping to compare 3-4 a day should be done sometime next week. |
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| Jul 3 2007, 05:57 AM Post
#20 | |
| Member Group: Members Posts: 264 Joined: 12-June 06 Member No.: 98668 | QUOTE (IcemanND @ Jun 29 2007, 02:51 PM) Here is the list of items I will be using to compare products, any others I missing? Support for dynamic disks, if you have not yet started the project? And maybe platforms, for those that have both windows and linux versions. |
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