Laplink DiskImage Free for everyone for limited time

Of course, the v5 of O&O Disk Image is not WinPE but rather BartPE as explained by wtsinnc in his above post.

I don't know why people want to have v5 of O&O, when there is already v6 and now v7?

Best regards,

 

Hi Jim1core13;

My experience with Laplink is extremely limited, but following install onto my computer I entered the registration code and got an error message that either my e-mail address or my registration code was wrong- they didn't match Laplinks' records.
Looking more closely, I saw a mistake in the disposable e-mail address I had created for this purpose.
Following the correction, I was still unable to continue until I completely erased both the e-mail address and registration number and started over.
Following that, I was able to gain full access.
My observation is that Laplink is VERY picky about how things are done.
I hope this helps.

On a side note, I experimented with the boot CD and it was able to both create and restore a full disc image from my computer.
I used Windows XP Home Edition- a pretty bare install with a total size of 1.56GB.

Compared to Paragon 11 B&R (Free) and Macrium version 4... which was accessed from a Hirens' boot CD (version 15.1), Laplink was slower in both creation and restoring of the image- by about 25% to 30% when creating, about 10% in restoration.
No error(s) occurred, but this was a very basic test of limited scope..
I can confirm ONLY that it worked for me under the test conditions described.

My early verdict is that I am better off staying with Paragon and Macrium.

 

Thank you Mohamed I copied the ISO to a USB flash drive and made it bootable using EasyBCD and it worked fine, other than no license error, which very well may be as you stated either a CD/DVD or USB, but I did place it on a USB with EasyBCD, apparently the ISO does not like doing it this way?

Thanks again and also, @wtsinnc, for your help in explaining your experience with this. I had no problem installing it in windows, but I did not like it, and only desired to use the boot ISO, but that is not proceeding passed the license error. It sure sounds like it is picky like aladdin stated, but it did boot up fine, just cannot find any license data or file, and Laplink has no info regarding this.

In any case, I have a good array of programs over time, Macrium free winpe ISO from sevenforums, of course IFL/BIBM, Farstone recovery manager 7.1, and Lazesoft recovery suite, Parted magic linux ISO, and a few others. All booting just fine from EasyBCD created USB flash drive Sure is nice to be able to do that, as USB is so much faster booting than CD.

Have a peaceful new year guys

Jim

 

Hi aladdin

I found out something interesting that I hope will help others like yourself that have been unsuccessful in getting the O&O or Laplink ISO to boot from USB drive using EasyBCD. This is an alternative to burning it to a bootcd which works fine. After much digging, I found the trick to get it working just fine on a USB flash drive. 3 main things MUST be done in order to boot from USB flash drive.

1) You must change the volume label of the USB flash drive to OODIPRO (this does not affect the bootable flash drives other boot menu programs, it is just a volume label.) He does detail a second method of how to get it working if one for some reason does not want to change their flash drive volume label, my instructions are based upon changing the volume label for simplicity.

This can easily be done by plugging in the flash drive and opening up windows explorer and right clicking the drive and clicking Properties. Then edit Volume label or name of the drive, and name it OODIPRO (short for O&O Disk Image Pro)

2) Copy the ISO boot file to the USB flash drive.

3) There is a folder within the ISO file called "OOLIC". This MUST be extracted from the ISO file and placed on the USB flash drive. This is the license data that must be on the target drive so the program will boot properly after registering the license data contained within the OOLIC folder which is a license config file.

Then the next step is to simply open up EasyBCD, deploy the system BCD to the flash drive if not already done, once the BCD of the flash drive is loaded, then click "Add Entry" in EasyBCD, at bottom of screen click the ISO tab, Name the entry, choose "Run from Disk", then navigate to the ISO file on the USB flash drive, and add it to the file section, then click "Add Entry" button.

It will take awhile to defrag the ISO and prepare it for booting and being added to the flash drive boot menu. Once that is done, remember to leave the flash drive plugged in, and simply exit out of EasyBCD once the new entry is added, giving it a few seconds to finish writing to the drive while exiting EasyBCD.

Reboot computer with the flash drive still plugged in, and choose the Laplink menu item. For me it worked flawlessly, finally! LOL Loaded up no problem and imaged quite quickly, once one learns how to navigate around and review settings and get to know the program. it should be set by default to image only USED sectors. It imaged my OS partition of Win 7 containing about 6.5GB in just under 5 minutes or so. I like the features of the boot program, and the interface once I got familiar with it.

Only thing I have to try out yet, is a restore, which should be fine I hope. Otherwise, it appeared to at least image quite well, and best thing is, I finally figured out how to get it booting as mentioned above.

Here is the link of where I found the information someone was kind enough to detail about how to properly boot the O&O ISO boot file, although he does not state to use EasyBCD, I narrowed down the details in steps above on how I finally got it to boot properly. EasyBCD is really an amazing utility.

http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/oodiskimage

Hope this helps someone to utilize this from Laplink which is O&O disk image Pro version 5.0127. it is older of course, but works fine on Win7 so far. I still have yet to fully review the user guide, so I will do that over the weekend in order to learn the features and what is supported, i.e., I am not sure it supports GPT disk in this version, but I only have an MBR disk so no problem on my end so far.

Have a nice day aladdin

Jim

 

Dear Jim,

Thank you for the detailed instructions. My beef was not that you couldn't burn it to USB, you could. My beef was the following for the PAID version:

1. You have to burn it to a dedicated USB, with nothing on it but O&O. Couldn't have bunch of imaging programs on one USB. O&O had to have its own USB. With v6.0, they gave you a beta program which burned it to USB or DVD/CD.

2. The above was one time deal. Thus, when the program was updated to v6.1, v6.2, v6.3 ...... v6.8, no updated WinPE was provided. The WinPE stayed the same old v6.0 with bugs.

I paid for v5 and v6 with no proper WinPE for restoring the image. Thus, when v7 came out, I decided not to pay more money for this crapware and not to bother with it anymore.

Best regards,

 

Dear Jim,

See my original post and the part which I have now highlighted in red.

Best regards,

 

Thank you aladdin for your help and indeed, my details are exactly as you stated. I am sorry I did not understand about needing a dedicated device, and now that I think about it, having to change the volume label is dedicating that device to properly boot the ISO.

I have found that even though I changed the label to OODIPRO, thankfully it has no effect on the other list of boot programs I have on this particular flash drive. I also agree totally it sounds like O&O has lagged on their winpe boot media. I appreciate you sharing your experience on this.

I guess them having to have a dedicated device is their way of protecting the use of their property, but it certainly does not make it user friendly unless one sticks with using a CD/DVD. Getting it to work on USB had me puzzled, and I totally missed your key word..."dedicated". Thank you my friend.

I do like this old version 5 so far, but did not like having to jump through all the hoops in order to make it work on USB. Most other winpe ISO boot files I have no problem with placing them either on hard disk or USB as long as I choose "run from disk". Some do require extracting a folder or other source material to get booting properly, but overall, EasyBCD has made it very easy to create a flash drive bundled with some nice boot media I will say that I have IFL on a partition and have that added to my windows boot menu using "load from memory" with EasyBCD, and it works fine, but generally, "run from disk" often works in most cases with most ISO's that may not work properly using "load from memory".

Have a great day!

Jim

 

Anyone else having trouble registering an account?

 

The promotional code has expired. Couldn't download.

 

Hi Gar

I was waiting for a response from Laplink support since last week. I heard from them last night, and they stated the following:

"We apologize about this inconvenience, please be aware that for some unforeseen issues, the marketing team had to take the .iso down and is no longer available. Here is the link to download the Disk Image program for free still."
http://www.laplink.com/landingpages/compdiskimage


They did give me a link to download it, oddly enough, but that was not my issue. I had a question from them regarding their boot media. This was just from last night, and I was confused as to why in the same response they both mentioned the program being pulled by marketing, then informed me it could still be downloaded? Now I am also not sure it will be the ISO file, or just their regular install program, but without the ISO media to boot from it would be useless in case of recovery so it is confusing.

Being that it was a marketing decision, I am thinking they may have possibly violated a license agreement or their give away went over their allotment, but they were not specific and support appears to not know why it was "pulled", so they gave me the link? A bit strange in any case.

The link works, but not sure it is the actual ISO download. I downloaded it last week and I was finally able to get it booting on my flash drive and it seems to work fine. Hope that helps.

Jim

 

I was able to create an account but the link shows a promotional code that has expired.

 

Thanks Root. Strange they would offer me a link knowing it has expired. Initially, if I recall correctly, this give away was to last until Jan. 10?

I am still thinking possibly license issue or O&O had an issue with their give away, but hard to tell without them explaining what happened. The program is actually O&O Disk Image Pro version 5.0127 rebrand by Laplink.

I would prefer their support have better communication with marketing and that they would explain the reason for pulling the offer.

Thanks again Root for reporting back.

Jim

 

I tried to register several times and always the same message:

"Error:
We're sorry, but we are experiencing technical difficulties, and are unable to process your registration at this time. The system will be available shortly. Thank you for your patience."


So I stay with other imaging progs.