Recommendations for Disk Imaging Software?

for a beginner i would say install Phylock, TBView in case he/she wants to look for stuff inside a 'snapshot', and Image for DOS.
i prefer image for DOS because it's faster on my machine than Image for Linux.

i could not find anything on their site about the upgrade policy so i assume we get all updates for free until next major version.

 

whats the major difference between ifd and ifl other than the dos / linux thing. can you still boot from a dos based disk to do the restore like you can with ifl? anyone have any idea when the next major version will be? i hate to buy a lic now to give it another go and its only good for a month or two?? thanks

 

i think it has more extensive networking option.
don't quote me on that though.

yes, they are very similar.
i know IFD now has a 'real' (same as IFW) GUI since the last update.
i don't know if IFL has it though as i did not want to burn a CD just to find out.

i could not say for sure.
however, they've been at version 2 since December 2007 and they're at 2.62 now.
i think we're good for at least another year.

 

What I remember, free updates for two years, and then discounted purchase for the next two years' updates.

I could be wrong.

For starter, just only install IFW and PHYLock and nothing else. This is good for the dummies like me.

 

testing it now and for some reason its WAY slower than macrium. i got a finished backup in less than a hour with macrium (about 150gb full on this drive and a older celeron cpu notebook) ifw is saying 2.5+ hours and at 3% its been 15min already??

also for some reason its causing my touchpad scroling not to work when its open..

 

i def want to be able to browse and copy files out of the images at times so i assume i would the tbi viewer for that also? and if i dont install ifl or ifd how would i make the boot disc to restore from??

 

zfactor,

Yes, both boot from a CD or USB flash drive to do a backup or restore of DOS, Linux or Windows OS. IFL can be used in a Linux OS. IFL has networking (wired and wireless) so you can backup to or restore from a network share. Some people prefer one over the other due to their hardware differences.

Going on past experience, probably a few years although updates are issued every few months. Again from past experience, once an upgrade version is announced you receive the upgrade free if you have purchased in the last 12 months. BootIt BM was released recently. Anyone who bought BootIt NG since July 2009 is eligible for a free upgrade. BootIt BM contains a GUI version of IFD where you can use a mouse as well as a keyboard.

There is a 30 day trial on each imaging app. Fully functioning in that time. If you buy, your license covers 3 home computers.

I know you don't want me to describe how to run these products automatically at this time.

 

1. Install everything, and this is what I do. The license is for three computers for $29.14.
2. On my two family computers, I have somewhere created a directory (folder) for my administration purposes. Under there I have sub-directories, one is called, un-used short-cuts. I move all the short-cuts there. This is for the start menu for them not to be cluttered. The only short-cut, I have left for them is IFW.
3. Make a boot disc of IFW, which is more powerful and uses WinPE.

 

any idea why so slow for me?

also do i need ifd or ifl really? otherwise i guess i would have to boot to a cmd prompt and run from within windows to restore? or is there another way?

i guess what i meant earlier is i wish everything was contained in one program instead of all these separate ones

does ifw run any services when its not actually open normally? i have not checked yet while waiting for this backup to finish i dont like to mess with a system to much when its making a backup.

 

Two methods. TBIView and Mount the image as a virtual drive. Unlike TBIView with version 1 images (3 years ago) the current TBIview opens in seconds.

Easy. Just double click makedisk.exe in the download.

Not really. I can backup a basic WinXP in 25 seconds. I'll think about your issue.

 

ive tried so many times in the past when testing tfw to get the pe disk right and never have been able to get it to work it always errored out on me. and i DO KNOW how to make a normal pe disk.. and why do i need to install everything what are the benefits.

yeah its taking forever to make this backupat the rate its going prob more than double that of macrium..

and brian i assume you mean to download ifd or ifl and extract them and use the makdisk that way? since without installing them during the ifw install i do not see any makedisk with just ifw installed?

 

Here are the links for making WinPE and BartPE disc for IFW, which was posted by Brian posted earlier.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/tbwinpe_tutorial.htm

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ho...BartPE Disk Containing Image for Windows.html

Install the whole package, afterwards move or delelte the short-cuts which are not needed.

The whole thing IFW, IFD, IFL and so forth is one download, and one installation.

 

ill check those out i always followed the ones on the terabyte website so if these are the same they never worked for me.

why no win pe disk from terabyte directly like macrium does??

 

Macruim gives you WinPE 2.0 and not the latest WinPE 3.0 or WinPE 3.1.

They give you one WinPE download for each license. There on, the updates are in pataches. I have four licenses therefore a total of four downloads. I have used two so far, one for x86 and the another one for x64.

They claim that they have to pay for these. I am not sure, as I understand it, there are free from Microsoft.

 

Yes, that's correct.

The easiest is http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/tbwinpe_tutorial.htm

I had trouble making other PEs boot.

But if you have any WinPE or BartPE CD you can run the IFW exe from a flash drive. You can even run the IFW exe (from a flash drive) using a Win7 DVD. I've run IFW exe from a Ghost 15 CD.

 

Shadow Protect say the same about payment.

 

For me it was easy to make WinPE disc. Now, I have a little bit faster connection, the dsl connection is four times faster now than it used to be in up until January 2011.

The download of Windows 7 AIK was a pain.

Before then, the dsl was like dail-up. so the download of Windows 7 AIK, took almost a day and each 1GB download for $3.00.

Now it will take about six to seven hours, and free download.

 

KOR,

I'm lucky. The WAIK took me me about 20 minutes. (20 Mbps ADSL)

 

yeah the biggest issue i have with shadow protect it their lic'ing its such a pain in the neck imo program wise its also a lot larger than either macrium or ifw and uses more memory while running as well as runs services even when not being used. imo the image manager is AWESOME though how it can fold images down many of my business clients LOVE this feature and i do know that macrium is only a 2.0 disc and i also have a total of 8 lic's to macrium (2 packs) and i think i have used maybe 3-4 on the pe downloads so far now i just use the installer from another download to install on one of the other machines.

brian you said we can mount the image as a drive is tbiview still required for that??

 

even less time here for the download

 

LOL, you make me jealous!

Supposedly, I am upto 2 Mbps ADSL, but these are claims.

Though, I have other benefits being in Oman, as Oman is heaven on earth.

My country is supposedly now upto 8 Mbps ADSL, but not in my area.

My better half is from USA, sometimes I feel like moving there just for fast ADSL/Cable.

 

It's not that fast very often. Microsoft, Adobe and BigPond (my ISP) give full speed but most other sites average a download at 150 kb/sec which is around 1.2 Mbps.

 

brian can ifw do continuous incrementals? the linux boot disc failed to boot on this laptop also byw im going to try the dos one now.

also i see where the add vitrual drive is but can i copy files out of a image if i do it that way or is that only with the viewer? i like to make a full backup and restore a fresh windows install with nothing but windows on it then update it then copy things like pics and documents etc from my image. whats the best way to do this with ifw? i know with macrium i can browse as a virtual drive and copy off it to the main c: drive, thanks

 

Similar to SP, no.

Yes, same method.

That's for Windows Virtual PC etc.

Was that USB or CD? With USB you sometimes have to try various creation choices in the makedisk setup. eg No partition, Partition Ex.

 

with a cd. it started to boot then showed a error and just sat at a black screen

so then either way the tbi is required to look at a image? im following the winpe guide you linked to right now and same as i got last time i tried this it almost finishes building then i get a error and it stops.... i have made pe disks before which were fine so i have no idea why i cant get this to work uts driving me nuts. how often should we have to make a new pe disk each time a new build comes out or can we use a slightly older disc to recover from for a few builds?