Rating: 
Summary: Sadly Disappointed
Review: I recently purchased and external CD writer for the purpose of creating an "image" of my c drive in case of catastrophe recovery. About a year ago I got a computer virus and while I was able to get the computer up and running, reloading all of the software, network info, print drivers etc took at least a day. A friend recommended Ghost but I chose Powerquest because it indicates that you can write directly to an external CD writer. You can but only if you have the latest version of windows. Unfortunately the instructions do not clearly indicate that. So after several attemps to save my image to CD, I finally called tech support only to find that it will not work with WIN98. Fortunately Amazon{.com} will let me return the software. Too bad about my wasted afternoon. I do give the company credit.... instead of the usual half hour wait on the phone for tech support followed by hours of trying to explain the problem and getting no where, he answered right away, assessed my issue within seconds and immediately suggested I return the product - hence the 2 vs 0 rating for this product.
Rating: 
Summary: Not straightforward, but phone support is good
Review: I run Windows 98SE. Installing a copy of the Driveimage 2002 (it comes with Driveimage 7) onto a newly-installed second hard drive, I had a lot of problems with Master Boot Record Issues. The support website had a solution, but it took a couple of calls to Live Support to correct faulty information on the page. Don't be scared by the threat of being charged for the 1-800 calls. The calls are free for regular installation issues. Support was *very* helpful, and the program now functions as it should, automatically backing up my entire C: drive daily at 2am. Follow the instructions closely, and use support if you are not a power-user. But for the installation issues, I would have given it 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Drive Image 7 is a DOWNGRADE from Drive Image 2002
Review: I've used Drive Image 2002 for 18 months and was very impressed with it. So much so that when my son bought a PC loaded with XP, I insisted on getting a copy of Drive Image 7 on it straight away. Other Dads (and Mums) who want to upgrade - beware!
Powerquest make a big play on DI7's ability to perform hot backups as an improvement on DI2002's use of DOS (meaning Windows can't be used during a backup). That's not the problem that Powerquest (and many reviewers) imply. With DI2002, it's easy to start a backup at the end of your day, which is a pretty sensible time to do it anyway. After the backup is complete, DI2002 can shut the PC down automatically. Those who use that trick will know that there is nothing simpler. Completely painless, reliable, 'cold' backups; capturing your latest work; with no inconvenience to you (you've gone to bed!).
In contrast, DI7 takes hot backups - i.e. while you're working on the PC. That's a bigger challenge, but DI7's fancy technology still gets a single-point snapshot of the system, even though your activity will change files between the start-time and end-time of the backup. Well that's fine, except that the PC seems to lock-up occasionally while running a backup. I imagine that's the clever technology working out how to deal with modified files but it IS annoying, all too similar to a dreaded system hang - albeit for only several seconds at a time. So, here's where DI7 loses its first 'star' - backing up your system while working is NOT as safe as after you've finished, because (doh!) your completed work will not be on the backup.
And I'll take off another star for the loss of the automatic shutdown facility. Now I can't leave the PC until the backup has finished. No more 'unattended' backups. :-( Next on my moan list is the loss of another feature - the ability to create and resize disk partitions. I'm not talking about multiple boot modes - just the ability to keep certain files on different logical drives, so that I can backup different types of data (on drives d:, e:, f: etc.) at different frequencies. Zip goes another star. With DI2002, you were forced to keep backup files on a different logical drive to the one being backed-up. Why? Simple: you don't want to back up your backup files! Let me explain. Having one backup is better than none, but it's more secure to take (say) one-per-week, overwriting each when it's a month old. That's five backup 'cycles' in total. It means that if you delete a file and don't realise for three weeks, you can still recover it from a backup taken four weeks ago. That's exactly what I did with DI2002 - it works a treat! Now, suppose you have 10gb of data and you keep your backup files on drive c: - as you must with DI7 if you don't buy their separate 'Partition Magic' product or have a second physical disk. Ignoring compression, your first backup will double the use of your hard disk (10+10), your second will quadruple it (10+10+20) and so on. After week 5, your backup files alone will require 310gb of space! By keeping them in a separate partition which you do NOT back up, your five backups take just 50gb. That's still a lot, but is not unrealistic with 120gb drives becoming common now. Compression does reduce the exponential effect, but the daft problem still exists - minus another star.
Oh... and Powerquest have failed to take the simple solution - get DI7 to just ignore backup files when doing a backup. Another star bites the dust for stupidity. So that's it, one star left out of five. I suppose those without DI2002 will not realise what they're missing and will still get some benefit from the product. If you have Partition Magic or two physical drives, some of these problems will not apply anyway but for me, it's a very disappointing thumbs down. PS. Amazon won't let me take away another star but I will anyway. The box that DI7 comes in boasts of the awards that DI2002 has apparently received, rightly so. As DI7 has - in my opinion - a cut down set of features, I consider Powerquest's mention of DI2002's awards misleading to the point of dishonesty.
Rating:
Summary: Drive Image 7 puts Ghost to Shame
Review: I've used Norton Ghost PE for several years on a Win 2k system. I can never be sure if I have a good Ghost backup or not. Often, I've had to rebuild my system from scratch after a disk crash when I discovered my Ghost backup was corrupted. Overall, I've been very pleased with Drive Image 7. It makes a perfect backup of Windows 2k when Windows is running. Each time I've needed to restore, it has worked flawlessly. I am backing up to an external USB drive. When restoring, Drive Image 7 has no difficulty recognizing and restoring from the USB hard drive. The negatives:
1) Have been unable to create a DVD-RW backup. It will run for over 24 hours trying to backup 7 gigs of data. I've never been successful doing this. I have come to the conclusion this software is incapable of backup to DVD. 2) It could just be my setup, but when booting from the Drive Image disk I am unable to see any other PC's on my local network. I've not spent much time troubleshooting this aspect, but from my limited experience so far, networking after bootup from the Drive Image CD will not work. However, if you want to backup your data to a locally connected hard drive I don't think you can beat this software. Hopefully future releases will fix the DVD and networking problems. When these problems are fixed, I don't think you could find a better solution to automated backups than Drive Image 7.
Rating:
Summary: Could be useful...unless your hardware is new
Review: I've used the predecessor of this product--DriveImage 2000, and had pretty good luck with it. In fact, it has saved my bacon more than once. DI 2000 had its problems though--for example, I could never make it work by scheduling a backup from Windows 2000 and then rebooting, though the documentation (and their support people) said this should work. I always had to boot DI from floppies to make disk backups. So I bought the new Drive Image 7.0, figuring that PowerQuest was bound to get it right this time around. I was wrong. PowerQuest cleaned up the interface nicely, and it does look glitzy. It probably works pretty well too, like its predecessor, though I haven't been able to try it out myself. You see, this version has a defect I haven't found a workaround for: it won't recognize my boot drive. That's right, when the DI interface comes up, it lists every drive on my PC except for the boot drive (C:). And of course that's the one I really want to back up. I've got an Abit IS7E motherboard, and am running 3 hard drives: 2 of them are Serial ATA (SATA), including the boot drive, and one is IDE. Drive Image can only find D: and E:, but not C: I emailed PowerQuest support (I only got the support email by complaining to a sales person, by the way) with my problem, and was told that DI does not support SATA, and that they cannot say when or if the product will ever do so. Since SATA is catching on rapidly (no more ribbon cables! Yeah!), this seems like a pretty major defect to me--one that prospective buyers should be warned against. So this might be a really useful product for you--unless you have the very newest hardware or intend to buy some in the future. PowerQuest has a "no money back" policy, by the way. Caveat Emptor.
Rating: 
Summary: You'll be sorry if you don't have it.
Review: Like most computer users, I expected that sooner or later something would go wrong. So I made it a practice to back up my entire computer (3 of them) from time to time. Something got on one of them. Try as I might, I couldn't find it and it was occupying a huge amount of space (almost 20 gb). Long story short, I considered reformatting the hard drive and reloading a ton of programs. First, I thought I'd try to reinstall the backup image of the drive. It worked like a charm. My concern that the old "hidden" program or whatever, wouldn't be overwritten. It was and it was restored perfectly to the last backup point. Don't be without it. You will need a device to backup to such as an external hard drive. Otherwise, a charm.
Rating:
Summary: This is Beta software
Review: PowerQuest DriveImage 2000 was a decent disk image backup program. It helped me recover from crashes several times, and I was able to clone my boot drive on a new computer with it. Also, the file editor allows you to pick out individual files to recover--great if you accidentally delete something. Given the usefulness of its predecessor, I had high hopes for version 7.0. Regrettably, DI 7.0 is not a reliable product. It has some very nice features, such as (allegedly) better Windows integration than the previous version, but it seems more than a bit buggy. First of all, DI 7 _does_ work on 2 of the 3 PCs I "administer" at my home. One of these is an older P3 box with a couple of IDE drives, the other is a Shuttle with a P4 Celeron and 1 100G SATA drive. However, DI does _not_ work on my main PC--a 2400mhz P4 with 2 SATA drives and 2 IDE drives. The problem is that DI refuses to recognize my boot drive--the one I really need to back up. I've corresponded with PowerQuest about this, and all they would say is that they do not support SATA and cannot say when or if they ever will. There are some other issues--the V2i service complains about "missing" disks when Windows starts up, and the GUI windows behave strangely, making the product difficult to use. I really wish PQ would get their act together--this _could_ be a really good backup option. I would expect defects like this in beta software--it's not right to release it in this condition, and provide no recourse for customers. As another reviewer noted, PQ does not have a "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" policy--it's more like "We've got your money, so sod off!" Caveat emptor.
Rating:
Summary: Beware of DriveImage 7 : it's a trap!
Review: PowerQuest sells you their DriveImage 7 upgrade promising you that you will be able to create a backup image of your drives on dvd.Not true in my case. I have win2k and upgraded from DI 2000 in order to have a backup of my C drive on one or two dvds instead of a dozen Cds, but ...If I backup the drive (10 GB,standard compression) on a hard disk, it takes about 7 minutes. On dvd : after seven hours (!!!) it had done about 22%. Which should mean about 30+ hours to complete the backup...
I called PowerQuest and told them the sad news in July.In August they asked me to wait for a patch. In October, a few days ago, they told me that I could download an upgrade: Drive Image 7.01 which should solve the problem. Not true: nothing has changed.I shall ask for a refund.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible support even for telephone activation
Review: PowerQuest used to provide excellent support last 5 years when I used their product. Symantec is giving us almost no support. The web site won't even give you instructions for activating the Drive Image 7 or Partition Magic 8 by phone correctly. What they gave you won't work for DI7 or PM8. Telephone number they ask you to call for activation is always busy and tell you to call back later. We paid for the long distance charge too. After 15 or 30 days,(depends on which document you read) you are locked out of the software you paid for if you cannot get through to Symantec.. Other very serious problems are revealed by other customers. Read their comments before you want to pay for the software. Also if you own more than one computers, you must purchase another license.
I'll just go back to my DI5 and PM7 for now.
Rating:
Summary: Powerquest is Dead
Review: Powerquest was famous for creating excellent software. This changed when Symantec acquired them. Fanatical support is gone -- questions and bug reports go unanswered now. It used to be that you'd hear back from the developers when you found the software doing something unexpected; it was clear that they cared about their product. Now you get stonewalling PR people trying to convince you that you should blame HP, Microsoft, your drive manufacturer, anyone but them when you discover that the program is creating invalid backup files. I had to create a program to restructure the backup files myself in order to recover my data! Sorry, guys. It was great while it lasted, but the 2002 version was the last solid version of this program. It's like you were having a brilliant conversation with Einstein, and just as it's getting good, someone replaces him with Carrot Top. Now, I'd rather use the simplistic backup software that comes with Windows XP. It may be minimal, but at least it works!
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