Rating: Summary: Forgot to burn a disc? Review: I wasted an evening and about 37 CD-R's trying to back up my main harddrive. Nothing fancy - just a normal backup of a HD with 2 partitions on my home system. I decompressed the VFD folder to get it to start - then went through the process of burning all those discs. Then it asks me to re-insert a the first disc, then the last disc, then disc 3 with image .003. Well, it isn't there. Disc 3 has image .004 on it. WTF??I'm not a software engineer, but I'm not stupid - the program should not allow me to over-write a previous disc, so either it allowed me to do just that - or it didn't create image .003. Either way - the only option I had was to cancel out of the backup process and start over. . . with Norton Ghost! Bleah.
Rating: Summary: Horribly complicated Review: I'm not an IT wizard or MS certified, but I'm also not a neophyte. Drive Image 2002 might be good for disk imaging onto removable media or a local hard disk, but it really sucks for writing this same image to a network drive for safekeeping. It has to reboot the machine to DOS, and you must create "network boot disks" on floppys. This process is horribly complicated and involves multiple reboots and other steps. Their docs are useless, and the web support is nearly so. Their phone support will cost you $$. Wait for their newer version due to be released soon. I returned this software.
Rating: Summary: Horribly complicated Review: I'm not an IT wizard or MS certified, but I'm also not a neophyte. Drive Image 2002 might be good for disk imaging onto removable media or a local hard disk, but it really [doesn't work] for writing this same image to a network drive for safekeeping. It has to reboot the machine to DOS, and you must create "network boot disks" on floppys. This process is horribly complicated and involves multiple reboots and other steps. Their docs are useless, and the web support is nearly so. Their phone support will cost you [money]. Wait for their newer version due to be released soon. I returned this software.
Rating: Summary: My primary backup solution for years Review: I'm not quite sure why people are whining about DI 2002. To be blunt, it works wonderfully - as well as 5.0. Indeed it even has more options, such as DOS-level networkable boot floppies. I almost always run it from DOS mode, from a bootable CD. My previous review is still accurate and attached. This stuff works like a champ, and imho disk imaging backups are the best way to go. Previous review: I've been using DriveImage as my primary backup solution for literally years. This latest version is the best so far. I have had no difficulties whatsoever under WindowsXP. I especially like the ImageExplorer! I make backups on a very regular basis, under multiple machines. I've never had a corrupted backup, or been disappointed with the results.
Rating: Summary: False Security Review: I've bought two versions of drive image and recommended it to many friends. The concept is sound, create an image of your system in case disaster strikes. The reality is not so good. I've tried to restore a drive image only to find the image was no good and any restore was impossible!! . One friend had a similar problem and a similar result - no restore!!. These are not fancy systems but from major manufacturers! Drive Image does NOT verify it has created a good image, by deflault, I believe. When you view the manufacturer's web site you probably won't see any upgrades to the software. Upgrades and corrections, don't seem to merit any attention. This, in my experience, is "myth-ware". Meaning it could serve a very good purpose but with my limited experience, I have to question whether it servers any purpose at all?
Rating: Summary: Do not learn the hard way Review: I've used Drive Image and am finally replacing it with hopefully something that'll function. Drive Image successfully created up a backup pqi file and even copied that onto cds. But its now that I am trying to restore the image file and am coming up with software errors and havn't been able to restore without error for 4 reboots. Now I'm uninstalling this garbage and replacing it with Ghost. If even that software can't get this right then a hard drive duplicator (hardware) may be the way to go. Try the norton product or get the hardware version, don't learn the hard way.
Rating: Summary: very disappointing Review: Our IT Consulting Company bought Drive Image 2002 for a customer. Even after five hours of work we could not get rid of error 1805 when writing data to more than one CD (although we read all the recommendations what to do when this well-known error occurs). Forget this product. Our customer gets another software and we sell Drive Image 2002 somewhere in the Internet.
Rating: Summary: The Previous Version is Much Better Review: Save yourself a headache and a few dollars and buy the previous version. I used Norton Ghost for years, until I upgraded to Windows XP and just could not get it to work. So I tried Drive Image 5, and kicked myself for not having bought it sooner. What a dream it was over Norton. Mainly, I could actually backup to my secondary hard drive from the Windows desktop. With Ghost, I ALWAYS had to boot from a floppy, then wait a few minutes till a screen showed up, then start the backup process. Even though Norton advertised you could do a backup from the desktop, the 2 techs I spoke with at Symantec told me they recommended backing up from a floppy. After I made my first backup with Drive Image 5, I tested it by restoring the drive. Bingo! What a snap! Another feature I like about Drive Image 5 is it automatically writes over the previous image I created. With Ghost, I always had to stop and manually delete the previous image. So I was especially happy when Drive Image 6 came out. And then I was especially disappointed after I got it going. First, they did away with the ability of Drive Image to overwrite the previous image automatically. (I felt like I was back to using Ghost.) And on top of that, it was a headache to delete the previous image: I just couldn't go to Explorer and delete it. I had to go to the Powerquest site and do a search, which I found quickly, on my problem. Their suggestion worked but now I was back in the land of Ghost. I soon sickened of Drive Image 6's "memory error" messages. I have an 80-gb drive with tons of RAM. The last message I thought I'd ever see was a memory error. I deleted Version 6 and am sticking with 5. If they bring back the features in 5 on the following upgrade, I'll definitely look to purchase. Other than that, not a nickel.
Rating: Summary: May work, may not Review: The big reason to purchase Drive Image is supposedly the Windows interface which is user friendly and easy to use.... if it works. On machines with SCSI as well as IDE drives, the Windows interface may not work (like on my machine) and you're back to booting disks to run the program (like Ghost). And it's not easy to find this information. It took me hours to come across this on the Powerquest website. Also, for support they want a copy of a file which cannot be created in Windows XP because it wants direct disk access and Windows won't permit it. I would imagine there is some way to run it, but hey, enough is enough just to get a question answered like "why won't this program work?".
Rating: Summary: Be careful with Windows XP and Drive Image 2002 - Revised Review: This is a complete reversal of a previous rating I submitted several weeks ago. One of the 'improvements' I picked up along with Windows XP was a little utility called "Go Back". It's a nice utility. Do NOT have it running when you use Drive Image. With that proviso (which IS covered in the manual), the program works with Windows XP as advertised. The usefulness of Drive Image is that I can make an image of drive C:, a partition on which I place ONLY the Windows operating system and some vital utilities. All of my programs and data files are maintained on other partitions, and the actual image of Drive C: is placed on its own partition on the hard drive, with a backup copy on a CD. This is a configuration that allows an extremely rapid imaging/restoring process. Whenever Windows bombs or needs a cleanup to the point of reinstallation being necessary, a simple restoration of the boot disk from the image and I am back online in 30 minutes or less. To their credit, PowerQuest worked with me to try to get Drive Image functioning, but I sabotaged the effort by not disabling Go Back. If you're familiar with previous versions of Drive Image, you won't be disappointed by this newest build. Just read the fine manual!
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