Rating: 
Summary: Superb Program (When you Read The Instructions!)
Review: I've seen the ups and downs reviews, with some people saying this software is catastrophic, and others saying it just isn't all that great. Those people are likely somewhat ignorant of computer technology, PCs, hard drives, file systems, and the like. Don't pay attention to that nonsense: This is a superb little application.
Drive Image 2002 is one of those VERY rare instances in computer life where an application does exactly what it says it will do: perfectly. It's elegant, simple, and for someone who actually reads the basic instructions, pretty much a no-brainer.
I looked at various Web sites, blogs, and commentaries by others, and saw that two good points to remember are to first, defrag the partitions you're going to image; and second, store the image on the hard drive (to a partition that has the room). This is problematic for people who have a single 80GB+ partition for their entire system, but those folks shouldn't be messing with an image program in the first place, as far as I'm concerned.
* You can set an option to split an image into chunks, the default being 670KB, a good size for CDs, and use your burner software to copy over the image file pieces. DI can easily copy directly to CD, but it takes longer.
I tested this program various ways, and in all cases it worked flawlessly. If I understand it, the two "rescue disks" use a different version of DOS than a typical Windows 9x machine, which provides a way to take an entire partition without worrying about open files. Likewise, it avoids the need to use the XP Recovery Console---always an aggravation in itself.
DI 2002 (v. 6.0) had no problem with my Win2K partition, although I'm using FAT32 and not NTFS. I'd suggest getting version 7.x, written to definitely include XP if you're on an XP machine. I imaged the C: and D: partitions (W98se, W2K), then formatted the D: drive. The restore options offer both, or one of the two, using an Explorer-like interface (along with many other options for specific files, or to create and resize partitions on the fly).
I then formatted the C: drive---always a very scary proposition---and booted to the rescue floppies. Again, not a single problem whatsoever. I restored the C: drive in about 5 minutes, and "wah-lah" I was back in business. Amazing!
Creating the image on the hard drive made backing up 5GB of information (10GB of actual space) a breeze. The entire backup, using high compression, took about 10 minutes. The restore was less. When I made a split image file it took about a minute longer.
Whomever used this program and trashed their system, apparently didn't bother to read anything, do anything, or follow any instructions correctly at all. Even so, with the interface being so simple, there must have been a far more serious problem on the systems.
I'm now a convert. No more "backup" programs: From now on, it's the image route for me. With today's trojans, worms, viruses, and other ways to almost immediately hose your system, there's a tremendous amount of peace of mind having a restore process that puts back a perfect system in less than 20 minutes.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for average computer user.
Review: 10Dec2002 ..... After reading all the reviews, I decided to purchase this program. One thing that became painfully obvious upon use was, this is not for the average user. Instructions are vague, documentation is lacking detail, and customer support via eMail is not any better, (that is, if you even get a reply). My experience with Power Quest and also owning Partition Magic 8.0 , is that this company does not stand behind it's products. Simple support question that should have been covered in manual or web site help files? Get real ... Because I don*t work for Power Quest, I have no financial gain in glossing over the many errors this program contains. I'm just an end user that want's a program that works out of the box, and I*m not willing to devote the hours necessary to make deep system changes in order to compensate a programs short comings. One thing I can say positive, is that it comes in a nice box. (system: AMD 1800+, WinXP, mass RAM & HD) Bob
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't support USB hard drives (no DOD driver)
Review: 99% of us want to use DI to backup out boot drives, so DI will need to do its work from DOS. However, DI doesn't support USB hard drives in DOS. So most of us are out of luck, unless we have multiple internal hard drives or SCSI drives. My copy of Drive Image 2.0 still works with my SCSI drive, but it was a... to setup because of the SCSI and CardBus drivers. Four years later, DI isn't any better for customers like me. Iomega is giving Norton Ghost away with its external USB hard drives right now (11/2002). Iomega says Ghost will image the internal drive to their external USB drive from DOS, but can't explain how. If you can not afford to get jerked around by Iomega & Norton Ghost, get hard evidence of these claims before buying.
Rating:
Summary: Drive Image 2002 fails with SCSI CD-RW.
Review: Drive Image 2002 fails writing to SCSI CD-RW. Destroyed many CD-R disks trying to get it to work. Error code 1805. No help from their support people. Their customer service was nice to deal with, after a long telephone wait. I got an RMA and returned the unuseable software. Too bad since I love their Partition Magic product.
Rating:
Summary: Best Backup/Restore Utility Ever
Review: Drive Image is the best, and easiest to use, backup software I've ever used. With only floppy and CD drives it can restore and entire hard disk in less than an hour, instead of weeks.
For easier use for regular data backups, I'd recommend re-partitioning so all data files are in a separate partition. Then backup that partition with all your data files to a rotating set of CD-RW's on a regular basis.
Rating:
Summary: Worked OK on ME, won't do XP
Review: I bought DI 2002 and used it successfully on Win ME for a month or so to do unattended backups (after a HD failure). Upgraded to XP, then could not get it to work through Windows-- continual "out of memory" errors on reboot. NO useful info on PQ Tech Support website for XP or running through Windows, emails to Tech Support came back with "canned" responses pointing me to older solutions on website for problems booting from floppy disks. Finally switched to Acronis TrueImage- yes, it won't run unattended, but it has a great simple interface and is much faster than DI, and you don't have to reboot to back up.
Rating:
Summary: Won't write to NTFS file systems...
Review: I had to return this software because it would not write to an NTFS file system. Actually, the program did write the image file to the NTFS file system (I'm running WindowsXP Professional) but when I went to verify the contents of the image file with the image explorer utility I got an error message. Don't buy this program if you need to write to an NTFS file system. Use Norton Ghost 2002 instead.
Rating:
Summary: Drive Image 2002
Review: I have been running PC's for many ,many years and I cannot get this useless piece of Software to run. SAVE your $$$$$$$
Do not purchase. There are literally hundreds of error messages
listed and I cannot even correct the one I have ( error 1805). Support solutions are worthless.
Rating:
Summary: Do not learn the hard way
Review: I have had horrible luck with this product. First, when it tried to create a backup partition, it wiped out my whole hard drive. So I had to reload everything. Then it will not burn the image to CDs as advertised. I wrote to tech support for help and no response after a week. I wrote again and no response for 35 days. When they finally did write back, they wanted me to uninstall practically everything and actually make hardware changes to my PC in order to get their product to work. NOT! The product went in the trash - and I don't buy Power Quest products any more.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Product
Review: I have had horrible luck with this product. First, when it tried to create a backup partition, it wiped out my whole hard drive. So I had to reload everything. Then it will not burn the image to CDs as advertised. I wrote to tech support for help and no response after a week. I wrote again and no response for 35 days. When they finally did write back, they wanted me to uninstall practically everything and actually make hardware changes to my PC in order to get their product to work. NOT! The product went in the trash - and I don't buy Power Quest products any more.
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